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I'm setting up a trio of old computers in my house to act as internal
servers for various purposes, and was wondering what advice some of the
veteran people here could give me. So far, here's how I want it to end
up:

Using the 192.168.0.0/24 Range

Box 1
192.168.0.1
Being as how neither the telephone company nor cable company have
penetrated this far into the woods with newer technology yet, I am
still using dial up, so this box has ppp0 as it's external interface
and eth0 as it's internal interface. It serves as my gateway/firewall,
as well as serving DHCP/DNS. I've been reading several articles about
DHCP and iptables, and have it worked out and going, as well as the
gateway, but I'm not too sure if my firewall is setup quite right, and
I know I have nothing done as of yet with DNS. I think I want a simple
caching DNS server, but I do want the ability to assign the 3 servers I
want to run names.

Box 2
192.168.0.2
This box, I want to be my internal web/ftp/database server, so I can
play with making web pages in a near live system. I am a Web Dev Major,
so I can set most of that up just fine, just need some help figuring
out if, one day, I want to make it world accessible, how to get Box 1
to forward web/ftp requests to Box 2.

Box 3
192.168.0.3
This will be my favorite box. I want to use it mainly for app
development, and the app I want to develop is a MUD. Yes, I still
mud, and the mud I normally play on has recently lost it's main coder.
Being friends with the owner, he jokingly told me to "quit playing,
learn C, and start working on the mud". Well, I decided that sounded
like fun, so I want to setup my own MUD on this box to learn the basics
of how it runs, how it all connects, etc... Again, setting this up will
pretty much be all me, but if I ever want it world accessible, can I
make Box 1 forward requests on the port it will use to Box 3.

So mainly, I need help with setting up Box 1, and making sure it can
send the appropriate stuff to Box 2 & 3, although any and all help
regarding any part of my setup will be greatly appreciated. I may one
day add in a mythTV server to the mix to record stuff for me, if I can
find another box and get the right components for it. Thank you in
advance for any and all help.

"mleo2003" <mleo2003@gmail.com> wrote:
>and eth0 as it's internal interface. It serves as my gateway/firewall,
>as well as serving DHCP/DNS. I've been reading several articles about
>DHCP and iptables, and have it worked out and going, as well as the
>gateway, but I'm not too sure if my firewall is setup quite right, and

Why use DHCP and why have DNS, when you only have three hosts?
Set up a static network, and put everything into /etc/hosts
files. There just is no need to be more complicated. Even with
three or four times as many hosts, a home network simply doesn't
need anything more.

I have 9 hosts on my network, and use DHCP only for connections
to a wireless access point. I do that only because it is
occasionally made available to others, and for non-geek users of
MS Windows is is just plain easier to provide them with DHCP.

--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) floyd@apaflo.com

mleo2003 wrote:
> I'm setting up a trio of old computers in my house to act as internal
> servers for various purposes, and was wondering what advice some of the
> veteran people here could give me. So far, here's how I want it to end
> up:
>
> Using the 192.168.0.0/24 Range
>
> Box 1
> 192.168.0.1
> Being as how neither the telephone company nor cable company have
> penetrated this far into the woods with newer technology yet, I am
> still using dial up, so this box has ppp0 as it's external interface
> and eth0 as it's internal interface. It serves as my gateway/firewall,
> as well as serving DHCP/DNS. I've been reading several articles about
> DHCP and iptables, and have it worked out and going, as well as the
> gateway, but I'm not too sure if my firewall is setup quite right, and
> I know I have nothing done as of yet with DNS. I think I want a simple
> caching DNS server, but I do want the ability to assign the 3 servers I
> want to run names.
>
> Box 2
> 192.168.0.2
> This box, I want to be my internal web/ftp/database server, so I can
> play with making web pages in a near live system. I am a Web Dev Major,
> so I can set most of that up just fine, just need some help figuring
> out if, one day, I want to make it world accessible, how to get Box 1
> to forward web/ftp requests to Box 2.
>
> Box 3
> 192.168.0.3
> This will be my favorite box. I want to use it mainly for app
> development, and the app I want to develop is a MUD. Yes, I still
> mud, and the mud I normally play on has recently lost it's main coder.
> Being friends with the owner, he jokingly told me to "quit playing,
> learn C, and start working on the mud". Well, I decided that sounded
> like fun, so I want to setup my own MUD on this box to learn the basics
> of how it runs, how it all connects, etc... Again, setting this up will
> pretty much be all me, but if I ever want it world accessible, can I
> make Box 1 forward requests on the port it will use to Box 3.
>
> So mainly, I need help with setting up Box 1, and making sure it can
> send the appropriate stuff to Box 2 & 3, although any and all help
> regarding any part of my setup will be greatly appreciated. I may one
> day add in a mythTV server to the mix to record stuff for me, if I can
> find another box and get the right components for it. Thank you in
> advance for any and all help.

You might want to leave 192.168.0.1 unused. Any network device (e.g.
router, print server, ...) you might buy in future years will probably
be preconfigured there. A lot of these wonders use HTML based
configuration that requires you to connect to it from a web browser.
It will be easier to access and reconfigure the new device if you don't
have a device on the default IP it uses out of the box.

Even if you use fixed IPs and hosts files to assign names, you may want
to set up a DHCP server that will allow visiting laptops, etc to
connect to your network without tinkering.

> Box 1
> 192.168.0.1
> Being as how neither the telephone company nor cable company have
> penetrated this far into the woods with newer technology yet, I am
> still using dial up, so this box has ppp0 as it's external interface
> and eth0 as it's internal interface. It serves as my gateway/firewall,
> as well as serving DHCP/DNS. I've been reading several articles about
> DHCP and iptables, and have it worked out and going, as well as the
> gateway, but I'm not too sure if my firewall is setup quite right, and
> I know I have nothing done as of yet with DNS. I think I want a simple
> caching DNS server, but I do want the ability to assign the 3 servers I
> want to run names.


If you want to keep it simple, and make things a whole lot easier on
yourself as far as setting up a firewall, consider using Freesco on that
box. Freesco is a single floppy router with PPP, DHCP and DNS built in,
and has a TON of other packages availble to make it even more useful. Best
of all, it's based on Slackware! http://www.freesco.org

@Floyd L. Davidson

I have thought about doing this, just to make my life easier, but then,
I also want this to be a learning experience, so if I ever get the
chance to setup a production box for someone and they need all this
functionality, I can provide it. Not to mention, I just want to do it


@vtcodger

I'd prefer to keep it simple for my sake, and if I do buy something
with an address like that, I'll usually plug my laptop directly into
it, configure it, then install it to prevent any headaches. By the way,
your reason for using DHCP is also why I want to do it, seeing as how
my wife and I have wireless laptops that connect in, and for now, they
are borrowed from work, and at any time may have to go back, and others
come in. I'd hate to have to keep reconfiguring each different laptop I
brought in.

@Leonard The Committed

I'll look into Freesco, it looks interesting, though, like I said, I am
also doing this as a learning experience, and have learned a lot so
far. Maybe I can use Freesco on it, see how it sets up the
configuration and all, and see if I can accurately mimic it with my own
version.



Sorry I failed to mention earlier that, while I do know that there are
easier ways to accomplish what I want to do, I really: a) want to learn
how to do this, and b) just want to for no better reason than to see if
I can.

On 2006-12-24, mleo2003 <mleo2003@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm setting up a trio of old computers in my house to act as internal
> servers for various purposes, and was wondering what advice some of the
> veteran people here could give me. So far, here's how I want it to end
> **SNIPPED**
> So mainly, I need help with setting up Box 1, and making sure it can
> send the appropriate stuff to Box 2 & 3, although any and all help
> regarding any part of my setup will be greatly appreciated. I may one
> day add in a mythTV server to the mix to record stuff for me, if I can
> find another box and get the right components for it. Thank you in
> advance for any and all help.


What you're wanting to set up is very similar to what I *have* set up
here at home right now. Since you indicate in a later post that you
want this to be a learning experience, I'm going to refer you to the
following:
http://iptables.rlworkman.net <-- mirror of Oskar Andreasson's
tutorial on netfilter/iptables. This is a good read. He offers
it in a printed book format if you prefer dead-tree versions of
things (I do, so that's understandable). Also, I can give a good
recommendation to Robert Zeigler's "Linux Firewalls" book - you
should be able to find it on Amazon.com for a reasonable price.
http://rlworkman.net/linux/conf/ - I have my gateway's rc.firewall
script (firewall/rc.firewall.alamo) there, as well as the bind
config files and dhcpd.conf file used in my home network. I only
post those because I've found that it's often easier to understand
things if you can also see some working examples of concepts as you
read about them. As always, though, your mileage may vary.

Good luck with it and happy holidays!

RW (robw810)

--

http://rlworkman.net

On Sun, 24 Dec 2006 01:42:41 -0900, Floyd L. Davidson wrote:
> Why use DHCP and why have DNS, when you only have three hosts?

Or use dnsmasq, which provides both with minimal configuration. All
entries in /etc/hosts on the machine that runs dnsmasq can be resolved
with the dnsmasq server. Other requests are forwarded to the DNS servers
of your ISP.

-- Daniel