Here is the long way to the solution (as I see the problem to me). I am not giving exact steps, you will try finding them yourself.
I am assuming you will let your Linux system running all the time and connected via ethernet. There are two tasks. 1. to create a wireless network between the the Linux (machine A) and the second (Windows? B) system. 2. to be able to share internet via station A. Task 1: You first want to see if your wireless driver allows you to put wireless card in "Ad-Hoc" mode. Usually, 802.11 interfaces can be put in "master" (take the role of an AP)/"ad-hoc" (ad-hoc mode in 802.11 standard)/"managed" (associate with an AP) (besides the monitor mode). The wifi card on my laptop only allows me to operate it in the managed mode. # iwconfig wlan0 mode Ad-Hoc If it returns an error, that means you are probably not allowed to setup ad-hoc networks. (Check for this). If this works, put the other end in ad-hoc mode as well. Assign IP addresses in the same subnet and you should be go (# ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.x). Alternatively, you can try putting A into master mode (in case you can't put B in Ad-Hoc mode), give an essid (# iwconfig wlan0 essid nameofnetwork), and make B connect to the this network. The above steps are a little temperamental. They work sometimes but they don't sometimes. I have never gone around trying to figure why they never worked. I have also noted that Windows sometimes connected and sometimes did not connect (between the same two stations). Again, I never got a reliable answer. If you try pinging the other machine, I found that ping would stall at the ARP resolution step. Sometimes, manually forcing the mac address helped (arp -s). Task 2: If you are able to ping each other, this part is easy. Instead of using WPA2, I would suggest you use encryption at a higher level (WPA2 is, contrary to popular belief(?), crackable.. google for it). Use ssh with -D to setup socks proxy (see man page). If you want more network transparency, you want to setup NAT on the A. Although this is not for the faint hearted, it is pretty easy. If you choose to go with this, I would suggest you at least use WPA2 with it (because NAT does not automatically provide any security). I am not sure about how the http_proxy thing works in IIT now (it wasn't there in my time) but I think both the techniques above should work. For the http_proxy authorizing server, both the connections would appear to originate from the same IP address (the linux machine). HTH, SB -- LUG@IITD - http://lug-iitd.org/Footer
