On Fri, Dec 19, 2003 at 02:45:19PM -0600, Cybe R. Wizard wrote: > On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 10:37:03 -0700 > "Monique Y. Herman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Maybe a dense question here, but what type of networking support are > > you looking for? ftp? ssh/scp? smb? Will you be providing an > > internal dns server? What is the connection to your home, and are you > > planning on having all machines connect to the outside world? > > > > ... > > As the subject indicates, I am completely uneducated about networking. > I have a dial up account so will probably not share that, just use at > whichever computer is in use. I think I am looking for a home LAN(?) to > allow all my family computers to speak to each other/access files from > one another, and print to any of their individual printers. If it's > possible to have one computer do the dial up and others to use that > connection through the local network, that would be wonderful, but I > ...
Rusty, Linux (any unix) is a very networkable operating system, and it's really not that difficult to have a small home network access the Internet through a single dial-up connection. If you make the dial-up connection on your Linux host, that'll give you an interface (probably named ppp0) with an IP address assigned by your internet service provider. On the same machine, install an ethernet card (it likely will be built in on any reasonably recent computer) for your private network, and assign it address 192.168.1.1 (configured in /etc/network/interfaces). Connect the ethernet port to a hub or switch; all the other machines can connect to that hub/switch as well, and that will be your private subnet. For a small number of hosts you can just manually assign IP addresses to the other computers (running a dhcp server is only slightly more "advanced"), recognizing that the *network* address is 192.168.1.0 (the trailing 0 means that this IP is a network and not a host), the net mask is 255.255.255.0, and the gateway is (or will be, when you get things working) your linux host, 192.168.1.1. Just choose a different host number for each machine, e.g., 192.168.1.2, 192.168.1.3, etc. At this point you should be able to "see" each machine on the private network, i.e., you can ping any of the machines, access web pages if you've got any webservers running, etc.. The private network is entirely separate from the Internet connection, so should work regardless of whether you've dialed-up or not, and should be sufficient for the Windows machines to see each other, share printers, etc. Getting the linux host to work with the Windows ones to share files, printers, etc., is the domain of Samba, and is a separate issue from the base networking setup. For convenience, you can define names for the set of machines on your network in /etc/hosts, and in corresponding files hidden somewhere in the depths of the Windows machines. Network address translation, aka NAT or masquerading, is the key to having the local machines access the Internet through your dial-up gateway. This is handled by the kernel, and works remarkably well and easily. I'd highly recommend using the Shorewall firewall to get that working (follow the instructions for a "Two Interface System"), but it's possible to do it without any additional software. The linux host's routing table (man route) directs incoming packets on the local net (probably on interface eth0) to the Internet-at-large, and visa versa, as needed. At this point, your local machines should be able to "see" hosts on the Internet when addressed by ip number; i.e., you can ping remote hosts, access web pages, etc. Being able to use names instead of numbers means getting name resolution working. This should already work on the dial-up host, as that is normally set up automatically by the ppp system. To get dns working on the other machines, the simplest thing may be to copy the domain name server (DNS) numbers defined in /etc/resolv.conf to the appropriate places in the network interface setup on the other machines. > At the same time, I have a daughter in college who will likely come home > and want to have the internet access at the same time as I. Perhaps I Just set up her ethernet interface the same way as the other local machines, i.e., assign a unique number on the local subnet, set the gateway to the dial-up host, and set the dns numbers. Alternatively, get a DHCP server running on the linux host to do all that automatically, and then just set those machines to "automatic" or "dhcp". > should look at broadband sharing, too, even though I won't use it yet? Broadband and dial-up differ in speed and the details, but make no difference in how your local network is set up. > Are the two kinds of network (local and shared internet) available > together in one box? Can it share dial up? (Likely danged slow) Each network is supported on a single "interface" on a linux host, usually ppp0 for the dial-up and eth0 for the local ethernet. Run /sbin/ifconfig to view these interfaces; you should see a valid Internet address assigned to you under the entry for ppp0, and your local network address under eth0. (There'll also be the "loopback interface", lo, which allows your linux box to talk to itself using the same networking routines in the kernel.) > I'm starting to feel as if I've not done sufficient googling. I'd highly recommend killing a tree and getting a decent book on the basics of networking... can't find my old reference, and it doesn't seem to show up on google/oreilly/amazon, but something like "Network Administration for Unix". Ken -- Ken Irving, Research Analyst, [EMAIL PROTECTED], 907-474-6152 Water and Environmental Research Center Institute of Northern Engineering University of Alaska, Fairbanks -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
