Connection sharing... complete newbie

[mehido]

Alright, so I've been looking around the net for awhile now, and everything on the subject I find seems to confuse me more. To be honest, I don't understand the tools I've downloaded at all (bridge-utils) and any help would be much appreciated.

Basically, I have no way of running cat5 cable to my attic, so the only way to access the internet up here is through wireless. My linux box (running Ubuntu gutsy) is connected to the router. My linux box has a free ethernet port. Now I have this other box, and it has no wireless card, and only onboard ethernet. That box runs Windows XP (sadly I still need it for school/other things wine won't run). So, to sum this up, is there any way to link the windows box to the linux box to share the wireless connection it has? Thank you in advance!

[coopstah13]

you need to get what is called a crossover cable, then you can connect the ethernet card on the linux machine to the one on the windows machine.

you will have to use the linux machine as the router, probably using iptables is the easiest way, someone more experienced will have to help you on that, but you definitely need a crossover cable, a regular ethernet cable won't do unless you use a switch

[mehido]

you need to get what is called a crossover cable, then you can connect the ethernet card on the linux machine to the one on the windows machine.

you will have to use the linux machine as the router, probably using iptables is the easiest way, someone more experienced will have to help you on that, but you definitely need a crossover cable, a regular ethernet cable won't do unless you use a switch

I actually have a switch from my last place of residence. So that is no problem. I appreciate that bit of info... it was more than I knew before!

[secondmouse]

On your linux box, I don't think you need bridge-utils in this situation. All you need to do is to create a script like this in your /etc/init.d/inetsharing (or whatever name you like)
and enter the following iptables command

#!/bin/bash
/sbin/iptables -o wan0 -s 192.168.10.0/24 -p all -j MASQUERADE

then make it executable and add it to the default runlevels
chmod +x /etc/init.d/inetsharing
update-rc.d inetsharing defaults

replace wan0 with whatever interface name you got for your wifi device (run ifconfig to figure out), and 192.168.10.0/24 with your local area network setting. The windows xp box should be in the same subnet as your linux box's ethernet interface. After everything's connected, run
/etc/init.d/inetsharing

on your network connections, you need to connect the switch to the ethernet ports on your linux box and windows xp with two cat5 cables.

hope this helps.