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

[Gene Heskett]

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.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If it pours before seven, it has rained by eleven.