RE: [Sheflug] Firewall, Please Help!!!

["David Bottrill" <xxxxx [at] xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Darrell,

>
> I'm having serious problems with setting up a firewall. I was at
> the meeting
> on Saturday and got some sound advice but I still can't set it
> up. I thought
> I'd write down exactly what I have done to set it up both on this main
> machine and on the smoothwall machine. I've even totally reinstalled
> Slackware 8 incase I'd screwed around with the distro too much.
>
> Slackware Machine
> --------------
>
> First I installed slack and did the following at the netconfig bit.
>
> 1. It asked for my hostname so I set it to spam (don't ask).
> 2. It asked for my domainname so I set it to dbr.
> 3. I chose a Static IP (From the list of Static IP, DHCP or Loopback).
> 4. It asked me to enter an IP for spam.dbr so I entered 192.168.1.2
> 5. It asked for the netmask so I set it to 255.255.255.0
> 6. It asked for a gateway address so I set it to 192.168.1.1 (the
> IP of the
> smoothwall machine).
> 7. It asked if I would be accessing a nameserver so I set it to no (coz I
> don't know what it is).


You should set this to 192.68.1.1 as the Smoothwall will act as a
nameserver. A name server will converts URLs to IP addresses. The smoothwall
should dynamically pick up the addresses of your ISPs DNS servers when in
dials up via DHCP, it will then cache these addresses and return them to
your Slackware PC.

>
> That's it for the Slackware machine.
>
> Smoothwall Machine
> ---------------
>
> I then installed smoothwall on the other machine and set it up as follows.
>
> 1. I set the Hostname to smoothwall.
> 2. I set ISDN to Disable ISDN.
> 3. I set the network configuration type to Green and Red (Red being the
> modem).
> 4. It then detected my NIC card.
> 5. I set the IP address of the machine to 192.168.1.1
> 6. I set the netmask of the machine to 255.255.255.0
>
> That's basically it. I rebooted both machines and it then says in the
> smoothwall docs to type in the IP of the smoothwall box in a
> browser window
> to set it up. But when I do it says Could Not Connect To Host. I've tried
> pinging the machine but when I do I get a 100% loss on all packets. I've
> checked the cable to make sure it's connected properly (coaxial) and it's
> fine. Both machines detect a the NIC cards fine so I can't see a problem
> there. I suppose it could be the cable... I'm running smoothwall 0.9.8 if
> anyone is familiar with the program.
>

What NICs are you using in the Smoothwall and Slackware boxes? are these
"Combo" card with both COAX and RJ45 connectors if so it is possible that
these cards are not automatically detecting which port is in use. If you are
using 3Com Etherlink  III cards then you need to obtain the configuration
program 3c5x9cfg.exe from 3COM you need to boot from a DOS disc to use this
program to configure the card. A number of other NIC manufacturers use DOS
configuration programs to configure the card. If the NICs have RJ45
connectors you could look to purchasing a crossover cable and use this
instead of the coax. If you can't ping the Smoothwall the you should look at
the cabling as this is certainly where the problem will be. Have you fitted
a terminator and "T" piece at both ends of the cable? you can't just use a
coax cable on it's own as each end must be terminated by a terminating
resistor. Termination is not required if you are using UTP cable with RJ45
connectors.

Once you can ping between the two boxes I would recommend that you upgrade
to smoothwall 0.9.9 which has just been released. And is much improved over
the version you have. I have been running 0.9.9 since the beta version was
released on my cable modem.

David Bottrill


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