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Using a linux as a router

J

Jassi

Diamond Member
Here is the situation in a nutshell:

There are over 100 people that connect to a wireless in my apartment complex (student owned and run, so we don't have a dedicated network admin). The PC running SuSE 9.3 and setup as a router is a Celeron 375 MHz. The problem is that something happened in the last month and the setup doesn't work anymore. The server feeds into a switch and a wired backbone that connects about 9-10 wireless G (Linksys WRT54s) routers to supply internet to the building.

As you can imagine, the traffic is probably huge but it has been working for over a year. The person who set it up moved out and I am trying to bring it back to its formal glory.

Here is what I've tried so far:

I used PuTTy to SSH in to the server and I can successfully ping 4.2.2.1 which I believe is a major DNS server. BUT I can't use the browser to access the net. I am about to try to ping some more servers (Google, M$..) and see if I can access the net outside of the LAN.

What I could use help with:

I need to know how I can setup or find a preconfigured a script or something that will allow me to enable a net connection. I am also open to changing the OS to a more suitable flavor of Linux. As a secondary goal, I'd like to set up a file server on the server as well for people within the LAN.

Thanks for all your help, I hope my babbling was coherent (I'm new to Linux and Networking).
Jassi
 
If the system is a firewall, don't set it up as a file server. Get a second box.

What isn't working exactly?

You can ssh into the system from your machine, so the box is alive.

You can't access the net from a browser on your machine? On someone else's machine? On the router?

If you traceroute from your machine to 4.2.2.1, where does the traceroute stop?

What is the output of cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward on the firewall machine?

EDIT: Not everyone has the root password to this box, do they?
 
tbh...I would tell you to ditch Suse (unless you know/understand the administration and iptables) and use smoothwall or something geared toward that. I have 60 subs on a smoothwall P3 550 that works great.
 
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
If the system is a firewall, don't set it up as a file server. Get a second box.
Click to expand...

Done. I won't mess with it, its a low priority compared to getting the net access working again.

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

What isn't working exactly?

You can ssh into the system from your machine, so the box is alive.

You can't access the net from a browser on your machine? On someone else's machine? On the router?
Click to expand...

I can ssh fine. I can ping google, msn and bunch of other sites. I have a laptop connected to the server via a wired switch and I can't ping or access the net from my laptop. Which is really odd because unless the box is specifically configured to block all packets, I should be able to ping the box, the modem and the outside world. Since I am complete n00b when it comes to Linux networking, I have no idea where to start to get the access back up.

I need to do a trace route and post the results, I'll look up how to do it.
 
How difficult is it to setup Ipcop or Smoothwall just for the purpose of sharing the internet and setting up a firewall?
 
Thanks for the help guys. I met someone who had much more experience with linux and networking and he setup a FC5 box to act as the router. The net is up and running and hopefully much more stable than before.
 
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