[Coco] Linux box needs ethernet connection to router/web/LAN

[Mike Pepe]

Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Monday 23 April 2007, Roger Taylor wrote:
>> As some of you might know, I have never gotten any Red Hat Linux
>> version I've owned connected to the web or to another computer.  In
>> other words, the main feature of Linux (networking) has yet to work for me.
>>
>> What I want to do now is connect the dern thing to my Windows LAN and
>> give it access to the web and possibly the other PCs shared folders,
>> if anything.
>>
>> I use a LinkSys WRT54G 802.11 wireless router with 4 ethernet ports
>> on the back.  This works great from Windows, and it's a broadband
>> router as well so every PC has access to the web automatically.
>>
>> Since Linux is "supposed" to be smart like this, I assume I can
>> connect that PC to the router and do minimal configurations to get it
>> online.
>>
>> The Linux box will be used for compiling CGI-BIN scripts mainly.  The
>> CoCo Cafe is one of those scripts I need to update.  But I don't want
>> to have to keep moving the binary back over to Windows just to upload
>> it to my server.  This required in the past a common hard drive I
>> formatted from Windows using FAT and then had it automounted under
>> Linux.  (My Linux box is a dual-boot Windows/Linux PC), but I ditched
>> the Windows drive recently in favor of laptops.
>>
>> So, the old DEV1 tower PC, as I called it, is now just running
>> Linux.  I will also get CCASM working for Linux if I can get my
>> network set up right under Linux.
>>
>> Can someone walk me through the steps they would take from scratch
>> for making Red Had 9 ready to connect to a router and on the web?
>>
>> By the way, I also recently upgraded the firmware on my LinkSys
>> router to DD-WRT which is actually running under Linux on the
>> router!  This hack is one of the best kept "secrets" for routers, and
>> I've now got software power boosting for the antennas, the ability to
>> act as a client to another router, and much more.  The modes are
>> there for almost anything, unlike the limited modes of the stock
>> firmware (which is already powerful, as it is).  So you can imagine
>> why LinkSys has done everything it can to keep Linux hackers from
>> taking control of newer versions of their router.  However, they keep
>> doing it anyway!  :)
>>
>> I've got etc/hosts set with hostname = localhost
>> Is that correct?
>> The eth0 device I think is set to use IRQ7.  The PC has a PCI
>> ethernet card called Network Everywhere or something like that, the
>> one Walmart used to sell for about $20.  It has always worked
>> flawlessly for Windows networking.
> 
> First off Roger, Red Hat 9 is now very very old & gray, and has long since 
> used up its allotted social security account.  Its an orphan, with no 
> security updates for several years now.
> 
> 2nd, go into your routers web page and setup a dhcp server if its not already 
> done.  I too use that best kept secret, dd-wrt, but running on an old 500mhz 
> k6-iii box, no drives, just a half gig cf card it thinks is a hard drive so 
> it boots from it, and with 320 megs of ram on that x86 board, ikt never 
> touches the cf card again after bootup.  And while I do have the wifi card, 
> I've not enabled it but once and then had to rezero the cf card losing my 
> registration number before I could recover a working unit so I'm running the 
> public version ATM.
> 
> BrainSlayer will send me another, but wifi isn't that important to me since I 
> can plug in a 6 foot cat5 when I need to run the laptop, and its a lot more 
> secure.  I have an access point running too, but its not connected to the 
> switch as long as I'm not playing with wifi.  I have a sniffer that can see 3 
> access points from here, only one of which is mine. :(
> 
> Once the dhcp server is enabled, then all you should have to do is run 
> system-config-network and tell the eth0 interface to use dhcp, plug in a cat5 
> and issue as root "service network restart".  At that point, you should be 
> connected & able to ping your other boxes by address, or if you add them 
> to /etc/hosts, by their names too.
> 
> RH9 is NOT going to have any working wireless stuff at all, and this fedora 6 
> install here is just now getting this wireless stuff enabled, but the std 
> cat5 ethernet works flawlessly even for RH9.
> 
> However, the bootup system snoopers to see what kind of hardware you have, and 
> the automatic loading of the drivers for that hardware is working quite 
> smoothly in most distro's now.  If you want to wait for F7, which will be out 
> in about a month, I'm going to update the FC5 on my laptop & maybe we can 
> trade war stories about the install.  I'll upgrade, but you'll have to wipe 
> the disks and start from scratch, no way will an RH9->F7 upgrade ever work.
> 
> If you have something precious, put it on cd's, or mount another drive 
> temporarily and make copies so the precious stuff is out of harms way when 
> the installer formats the main drive.  Staples did have a usb powered, neatly 
> cased 2" 40GB drive for $40 a couple of weeks back that would be very handy 
> for such, but I don't know if any of those are still on the table where you 
> are.
> 

I'd have to agree with Gene here. RH9 is ancient. I know we're a group 
of vintage hardware/software enthusiasts, but I'd strongly suggest using 
a more modern Linux distro. If you want to stick with Red Hat, Fedora 
Core or Centos are good choices (I've had better luck with FC) and a 
bunch of folks are doing the Ubuntu thing, so plenty of community 
knowledge there.

Yeah, I may work at the evil empire, but I'm a linux guy at heart. My 
first linux install was slackware 0.9, distributed on about 50 floppy disks.

Ah, those were the days :)

-Mike