I'm having some problems with Mandrake 7.2's Internet connection sharing
feature. First, I'll say that I upgraded my kernel to 2.4 final (via
latest cooker RPMs) right after I installed 7.2. It might have some
significance. I didn't set up Internet connection sharing until later,
when I realized that I needed to do host-only networking in VMware to
connect to the Internet from my virtual machine. (I wanted to share my
connection via VMware's virtual ethernet interface, vmnet1.)
So I went into DrakConf and selected "Internet Connection Sharing". I
was prompted with the message "Warning, the network adapter is already
configured. Would yo like to reconfigure?" I answered yes. I realized
that my network adapter had already been configured, because the host
machine was set up to connect to the Internet. (I connect via my
ethernet card to my LAN which provides Internet access.) After
selecting "yes" the program did some stuff like install a DHCP server
and reconfigure my scripts. I was surprised to find that it didn't even
need to ask me which ethernet interface I wanted it to share the
connection over, especially since vmnet1 is an interface with a
non-standard name.
It turns out that after the "Internet Connection Sharing" program did
its stuff, my whole Internet connection went down on my host machine.
It improperly reconfigured my system so that I couldn't connect to the
Internet anymore (nor could I share my network connection with any
VMware virtual machine). I found out that the reason I couldn't connect
to the Internet anymore was because it changed my IP address on my real
ethernet interface (the one that hooks up to the LAN) to 192.168.0.1 or
something like that. So I changed it back to what it had to be in order
for the LAN to grant me a connection again. It made no modifications to
the settings for my vmnet1 interface, somewhat as I had expected,
unfortunately.
In any case, every time I boot my computer, a bunch of things FAIL now,
including the DHCP server and some other connection sharing services
that get started. I'm not sure why they're failing. Could it be
because they are not compatible with the iptables features of kernel 2.4
(instead of ipchains)? Or is it because I had changed my IP address on
my primary ethernet interface from 192.168.0.1 back to my normal one?
How do I get my connection to share for VMware? I don't have a real LAN
which I want to share the connection with, it's a virtual one. Is it
possible that Mandrake doesn't support this yet? And is it also
possible that the Internet Connection Sharing is incompatible with
kernel 2.4?
Thanks for your help,
Paul
