My apologies in advance if I start ranting again. I am really frustrated here. I have been fart arsing around with Linux for two years now. But the one thing I have never achieved is to share a dial up connection with a couple of other computers.

All I want to do on my SuSe 9.3 box is to share the dial up connection to my ISP with two other PCs in my house.

Kinternet sets up the dial up modem nicely. No problems there. There are a couple of NICs and these are configured as well. Both work, both can be 'seen' from the other PCs.

So, in accordance with the book, I seem to have the prerequisites, i.e.configured multiple interfaces (modem, ethernet card etc).

Next, the book says to configure the firewall and set masquerading. I have tried all the "zones" and hammered the keyboard 'til my fingers started bleeding (OK I'm exagerating a little)

But no matter what, when I get to the masquerading part in the firewall part of Yast, zilch. nada. nothing. The frigging thing is grayed out.

What is it with Linux, and especially Suse? Everything else works great. So why make an everyday task like sharing an internet connection so complex? The Mac and WinXP doesn't make me go crazy when I a want to create an ICS gateway!

Novell support has been no help at all. Apparently this is beyond the normal support I am entitled to for buying their package. Bastards! Which, incidentally, is the same excuse I got from Mandrake when I had similar hassles with Mdk 9.x

I would really be grateful for a simple, practical instruction that doesn't require me to read 600 pages that only confuse.

Any help out there?

TIA. I feel much better now

On the host computer edit the file /etc/init.d/boot.local and enter the following code

Restart your computer and ip forwarding will be automatically setup everytime you start your computer.

Sorry if I'm being obtuse. Would

/sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables --table nat --append POSTROUTING --out-interface eth1 -j MASQUERADE
echo "1" > /proc/sys/netipv4/ip_forward

work for two NICs? Would it over-ride anything in the SuSe firewall? Would it solve my problem (in the next post up)? Thanks...

Yeah should work dont' see why not, first line should be incoming internet connection and second the going the network.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/326095

please see my post above, I followed a HOWTO on the novell website and it worked for me, there is no need to mess around with iptable stuffs, everything can be configured within YAST

To set it up using YaST one must enable the firewall and for some of us that would be redundent or something we just don't want to do. Setting it up using ip tables doesn't require a firewall.

Thanks.
I was aware of that configuration which works fine on ADSL/ Cable connections.

I tried to work my way through it again, but because I have a dial up connection I cannot 'plug the internet connection' into one of the ethernet cards. Anyway, after a few hours of mucking about I only managed to wreck the network setup on the Linux box. A couple of more hours to get it going again, which didn't work. IN frustration I then reinstalled Suse from scratch.

I'm going to give up now. Easier to leave a Windows PC in the network for dial up internet sharing. There are some things Mr. Gates does much better than Linux, which is much better for my health ;-)

regards

3 of the 4 ISP's I tried to share through windows a year ago didn't work. Most use 3rd party programs and make it impossible to share the connection.

Don't know. That's not been my experience on WinXP. Run the Network Setup wizard, choose the internet connection, select the NIC (if there's more than one), choose file/ printer sharing, click apply, wait a moment or two and it's done. Wortks every time for me.

I don't care what the Linux purists say, it has to be a better way than wading through pages of instructions, spend hours on end trying to sort it only to find in the end that everything's broken.

Anyway, it works on Windoze so I will leave it alone.

Don't know. That's not been my experience on WinXP. Run the Network Setup wizard, choose the internet connection, select the NIC (if there's more than one), choose file/ printer sharing, click apply, wait a moment or two and it's done. Wortks every time for me.

I don't care what the Linux purists say, it has to be a better way than wading through pages of instructions, spend hours on end trying to sort it only to find in the end that everything's broken.

Anyway, it works on Windoze so I will leave it alone.

I have had the exact same problem and situation with my linux box, and was thinking of the same things! I will try out the suggestions posted. Thanks for all the info.