(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

This setup also works from a XP{server} to a Puppy{client} arangement. The DNS IP address still has to be entered on the Puppy machine. I'm in Puppy now sharing with a XP machine. Same setup thru network wizard. DHCP..I dunno.. Probably easier but beyond the bounds of my very limited networking expertise.
Bobby

Thank you Bobbyok, I wish I had talked to you sooner I would have saved me a lot of time. This was some months ago now.

It seems that puppy already has all of the software dependencies of a good firewall and router, all it needs is someone to incorporate the right wizards to automate it, I definetely agree with you.

I can see from my work a great opportunity for Windoze users to use puppy as a router/firewall/internet security product with just a few simple addons or the built in wizard. If for example they have just purchased a new computer to run Vista and want to find a use for the old one. After a while they would begin to wonder why their internet router runs faster, more reliably and without all the hassles of their all singing and dancing windoze box, and hopefully look into open source further!!!

There are already linux distros to do this, like smoothwall, but puppy has the advantage of making the older pc into a fully functional computer as well as a NAS box (network attached storage) and a print server which smoothwall cannot do without considerable tweaking. Puppy can work an similar kind of specs to smoothwall.

Something else that would be useful, would it be possible to share the connection out of several network cards at once? this way several other boxes could share a connecton just by adding a cheap ethernet network card. Wireless sharing would be nice to have too, as it would allow a cheap £10 wireless card and a old puppy pc to create a wireless hotspot, rather than about £50 for a dedicated router. In a business sense this would make it profitable for recyclers to use puppy to turn old pc's into internet connection sharing machines.

This feature needs a good developer to take it on

ecomoney wrote:Something else that would be useful, would it be possible to share the connection out of several network cards at once? this way several other boxes could share a connecton just by adding a cheap ethernet network card. Wireless sharing would be nice to have too, as it would allow a cheap £10 wireless card and a old puppy pc to create a wireless hotspot, rather than about £50 for a dedicated router. In a business sense this would make it profitable for recyclers to use puppy to turn old pc's into internet connection sharing machines.

I'm not sure it's all that useful to stuff more than two ethernet cards into a box. You can get a switch for under $10 US (about 20 pence UK at current exchange rates ), so all you have to do is plug the "output" into the hub/switch and you're all set. I'm worried that multiple cards will eventually start fighting over IRQ's and such, causing more headaches than they solve. Better to get those expert Puppy trainers working on giving Puppy basic firewall capability -- I love the idea of having Puppy start out as just a firewall, and then when Vista goes down (again) the always-loyal pup is ready to step in.

I tend to agree with RobertB. Probably better to stick with only one net card{2 if you have cable or DSL} and a switch or wireless router. I'm using an old netopia 802.11G wireless router set in bridge mode with Puppy. I gave $1.99 for the router at a local thrift store. I can share internet all over my house, the yard, and even into the back pasture...lol. Pretty cheap hotspot setup.

While were on the subject of economics, there are places in the world where 20 uk pence is worth about the same as ten dollars of their local currency, and plenty of places where its actually worth more. http://www.finfacts.com/biz10/globalwor ... capita.htm 2 dollars is about a months average wage in some places.

As much as I know a bit about economics, what would be the technical issues regarding using multiple network cards?

bobbyok, thanx for the linuxforum link. I have been trying to share an internet connection for a couple of months now. I did as they said on the linuxforum and got both computers on the internet straight away.
And it is such a simple solution!
Thanx again.

First- Set up your server machine{the one with the modem and either the firewall enabled sharing or the modified rc.local}.
Second- Fire up your client machine and go to the network wizard. Click on eth0{or whatever your eth is designated}. Click on static IP.
Enter your IP address = I use 192.168.0.10 for the laptop. This will be the IP address of your client machine...click ok. Enter your netmask = should pop up 255.255.255.0 automatically..click ok. Enter your default router = the IP address of your server machine. I have a very simple home network so mine is 192.168.0.1...click ok. Enter the IP address of a nameserver for resolving DNS names = the primary DNS IP of your internet service provider...click ok. That's it. Go to googling!

ok, I tried the setups with entering the ip addresses manually on the client machine. Im posting from my server machine now.

Just a few hints:-

You need to go into the ethernet configuration wizard and test both ethernet ports before the firewall wizard will recognise them, otherwise it bombs out with an error at the end.

you will need to use a special type of ethernet cable (crossed) to cennect this way, you can tell this if the clear plugs on the end of the cable colours are wired up differently rather than looking the same.

Questions

How do I find the ip address of my "client machine", is this the computer that the internet is connected through, i.e. between my modem and the pc I want to share the connection to. Do I put the Modems IP in? I did an "ifconfig" in a prompt but there isnt an ip addres for "eth1" (eth0 is my dhcp modem connected card and eth1 my connection to the client machine).

And yes, we do need a puppy networking guru to make a simple script for this!

All a little deja vu, perhaps, but I picked a powered hub out of a skip (even <20p) in the road outside an office being rewired for teraHetrz interconnects, no doubt, some years ago and forgot about it. When I switched to broadband - bingo - a wired network. Haven't bothered even to set up my wireless router yet. Most larger hubs (mine is 8-port) will have a push-button cross-over switch for one of the ports - useful for adding even more hubs, PCs, etc. Wired networks don't have to worry about interception, WEP, WPA, etc - like the stinger missile everything is wire-guided to the target. Make sure you use splayed-contact RJ-45 plugs if making up your own patch leads from (old recycled?) solid core TP cable, which is now back in favour on account of better stability, whatever that means.

Hi Ecomoney,
Good hints! The client IP isn't something you find..it's something you assign. Say your server IP is 198.162.0.1..then your client IP can be anything from 198.162.0.2 to 198.162.0.254. Each client you add will be the same except for the last number{192.168.0.X}.

It would be great if this post could be moved to the How To's section.

It's a thread that starts out with a question and eventually arrives at an answer. That's what this forum is for. It doesn't quite qualify as a howto.

Would anyone care to clean it up and contribute a "how I did it" to the Howto section?

I would love to, if Id actually learned how to do it. As a networking newb I still cant figure this out. Its had over 1600 page views so is obviously a very popular subject. Guess I will have to wait for the wizard to hopefully be included in a future version, or firestarter to be properly compiled.

Just some news, Gekko has successfully compiled a .pup to easily share the internet connection between two ethernet ports on a puppy pc. It can be found here

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=15129

Currently it is in BETA but, judging by the fact that this post is here, its working

In the UK at least, one can observe by the junk piles outside folks' houses, that many are renewing their central heating systems at this time, hopefully with condensing combi boilers. It occurs to me that, whilst the plumber has your floorboards up, this would be an excellent time to slip in some TP network cables and a few dozen ports around the house? Wired networks are a lot less bovver than wireless, and, as I indicated earlier, are as secure as a wire-guided missile.

ecomoney wrote:Just some news, Gekko has successfully compiled a .pup to easily share the internet connection between two ethernet ports on a puppy pc. It can be found here

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=15129

Currently it is in BETA but, judging by the fact that this post is here, its working

Thanks for the info! I'll see if I have time to try it out tonight... the only problem is that I have one ethernet card and a dial-up connection. Dollars to donuts it doesn't account for such an old-school setup... but it never hurts to try.

I connect to the internet via dialup with a machine running Puppy. I'm trying to share my internet connection with one other computer, which runs SuSE 10.0

I connected the two machines' NICs with a crossover cable. Both NICs are embedded.

After setting up firewall on the Puppy box to enable internet sharing, I followed the instructions below without much trouble.

[quote="bobbyok"]
First- Set up your server machine{the one with the modem and either the firewall enabled sharing or the modified rc.local}.
Second- Fire up your client machine and go to the network wizard. Click on eth0{or whatever your eth is designated}. Click on static IP.
Enter your IP address = I use 192.168.0.10 for the laptop. This will be the IP address of your client machine...click ok. Enter your netmask = should pop up 255.255.255.0 automatically..click ok. Enter your default router = the IP address of your server machine. I have a very simple home network so mine is 192.168.0.1...click ok. Enter the IP address of a nameserver for resolving DNS names = the primary DNS IP of your internet service provider...click ok. That's it. Go to googling!
In my case I use att worldnet. I typed worldnet primary dns into google and the DNS numbers popped right up in the search. You can find most DNS numbers by going to your ISP's support webpage or simply call them and ask.
[/quote]

The SuSE box shows the NIC as active, but can't ping the Puppy box (says, "Destination host unreachable"). When I enable IP forwarding on the SuSE box, it just says "Network unreachable" when I try to ping the Puppy box.

I know how to change network settings under Linux, but don't feel like I understand all of the underlying workings very well. Also, I feel somewhat in the dark because Puppy doesn't seem to support ipconfig, so I'm not sure how to change network settings from the command line.

I don't plan to use the internet much at all on the SuSE box, but I use it to rip my CDs, so I want grip, running on the SuSE box, to be able to access Freedb to get tag information.

When setting up the firewall, I go with the default options offered by the wizard in Puppy. I don't select any services to be made available to remote hosts except ssh, which is the only one selected by default. Otherwise, I just select the obvious choices for sharing a dialup connection.

As I mentioned above, I don't know how to manually configure the network in Puppy, so I use the Network wizard to set the IP address, etc. by clicking the "Static IP" button and entering the information at the prompts. I've tried setting this up 2 ways, one leaving the DNS field blank, and one by entering the DNS servers from my ISP.

Is there something obvious that I'm missing?