Last weekend I turned an old 486 with 2 NICs into a simple gateway for my cable modem connection. I did a basic installation from bf24 rescue and root floppys and just installed the default packages with dselect. I know this has included a few things which I can almost certainly do without like 'lynx' and 'mutt' so I will get around to removing them eventually.
I added the necessary entries to configure eth1 (the internal NIC) and could ping both eth0 and eth1 from a Win98 machine connected to eth1 with a crossover. I could ping the outside world from the debian box but not from the Win98 machine. I tried entering the following commands manually as root to get the debian box to forward packets:- echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth1 -j MASQUERADE But the last line generated an error message which I think was to do with the MASQUERADE part. Then I reviewed the packages available and decided to install 'ipmasq'. After a reboot I could ping the outside world and access the internet from the Win98 machine with no problems. I *was* planning to keep 'ipmasq' installed and add iptables rules. However, I have just re-read some of the messages from this list which I filed for future reference. I get the impression that I shouldn't need 'ipmasq' and can achieve the same with iptables. Is that correct? If so, does anyone have a small iptables script which I can use to reproduce the functionality I have at present or point out what I have done wrong? TIA Mike
