This is a page that I created mostly for myself so I will have a copy of the things that I used when setting up my home network in 2000. However, if this thing becomes useful, be sure and fill out my comment card and lemme know you found this thing helpful!
First Things First:
After the OS installed, I got lucky. With most cable modems you should be able to pick up an IP from them on your outside ethernet card without having to actually log in to whatever service you are on. This depends though, and I use RoadRunner so your milage may vary. Once you get an IP address what you want to download are a firewall script and I downloaded the actual login script for RoadRunner ported to Linux. Both of these files can be found on my files page.
Firewall Script:
I downloaded the basic firewall script from Redhat that they say is "medium/light secure". It does everything I want and so I'm extremely happy with it. However there are a few modifications I made to it. First off, I disabled CIPE, cause I don't use that, and then I made sure that eth0 and eth1 were chosen for the right device (internal or external) and then I put in my local intranet address. (192.168.49.0/24) Also, make sure you take off the ".o" trailing the modules, for some reason RedHat doesn't even know that they have that wrong, hehe. However, if you are using PPP to connect to the outside world, just make sure that your external device is set for that.
Just save it as /etc/rc.d/init.d/firewallss and make it load on boot time (instructions inside the file) and you are done with the firewall script. YES!
RoadRunner Login:
This script speaks for itself, the only problem I had with it on Redhat 7.0 (I had no problems with it on 6.2) was that it wouldn't autobuild and I had to get out my Redhat cd and install a few more RPMS cause I didn't have a few things installed, but other than that, it basically asks for your password and username and you are off! At this point you should be able to network your computers somewhat successfully but there's still a little bit more to do.
DHCP:
Ok, I like to make my Linux server also serve as the DHCP server. This just basically makes it give all the information to the rest of the computers on my network. Don't get this confused with DNS. That's something else. However, you are going to have to know what DNS servers are being used so you can put that information in your /etc/dhcpd.conf file. My sample dhcpd.conf can be found on my files page.
Also, you gotta edit your /etc/rc.d/rc.local file and at the very end you need to write:
# Set up the broadcast device to support DHCP
/sbin/route add -host 255.255.255.255 dev eth0
Also, edit your /etc/rc.d/init.d/dhcpd file to use your eth0 as the default device. Replace the line:
daemon /usr/sbin/dhcpd
with
daemon /usr/sbin/dhcpd eth0
Then restart your DHCP server by typing:
/etc/rc.d/init.d/dhcpd restart
This should have you up and running with DHCP.
Samba:
I like to share my huge Linux drive with my windows drives through network neighborhood, and to you do that, through installing samba. Now, I had to install these files and I got some weird results when they wouldn't install off my 7.0 cd, so I had to force install the rpm's and manually type some files. Then, I found out, that for some reason, 7.0 (unlike all the previous Redhat's) don't use the /etc/smb.conf file for reference. (I think it's now /etc/samba/smb.conf), but I have a copy of what my smb.conf file looks like because I downloaded a webadmin program to write it for me. Then I used SWAT (within webadmin) because for some reason I couldn't get it working by itself, and I filled it out and it wrote it for me and put it in the right spot. WOOHOO! (but then after all that I figured out where it was and now just use their default one pretty much and you don't need to use any special program to write it for you) I have to admit though, this has to be the hardest part of getting your network set up. Sharing a Linux drive with your windows box's always takes me the longest time. I can usually get everything else set up really quick but to get this setup it usually takes a while cause they don't understand that I don't want any passwords on my data drive so I can just drop all my files there and so can my roommate and we don't have to worry about giving it a password...we just want data backup more or less.
Various other File Edits:
There are a few other files that I had to edit, such as the /etc/hosts file. These are more important than you think, it made the difference in about six hours of work when I couldn't figure out what was wrong, I had the wrong IP's typed in for the computers...*sigh* One file that you want to check is make sure that networking is turned on in the first place and that it has all the properties it needs. Pico your /etc/sysconfig/network file and make sure it has the following lines in it:
NETWORKING=yes
FORWARD_IPV4=yes
The first line tells Linux that we want the network devices brought up at boot time. The second line tells Linux to enable IP forwarding which the firewall script does through ipchains. As for your /etc/hosts file make sure that it has a list of the machines on your network and their names. My hosts file can be found on my files page but basically you have an IP and then a computer netbios name.
Finishing Touches:
Now that you have everything in place, what you need to do is restart all your network services, or you can just restart your Linux box, hopefully on bootup it will do everything just right. If it does then you can go to your windows box's and restart them and they should grab all the information off the DHCP daemon running on your Linux server. If all goes well you should be able to connect to the internet just like you are connected directly to it via ethernet.
So I hope that helps, lemme know if I forgot anything, this thing is kinda boring and long to type...hehe...and we all know how lazy I am...if you have specific problems or are stuck feel free to email me! byeeee!
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