newbie networking laptop to desktop. no expirience. help.

[linuxdork]

i'm trying to set up my laptop as server for a couple of reasons.
Let me give some specs. first.
Toshiba Satellite running SuSE 9.2 pro
connected wirelessly to linksys router for internet (Atheros card).
connected via cat5 to desktop (Toshiba ethernet card)

Homemade desktop running SuSE 9.1 pro
not connected to the internet, connected to notebook via cat5 (3Com
ethernet card).

first goal:
configure laptop to provide internet to desktop for downloads.

second goal:
configure NFS or SAMBA I guess, (which ever is best for this) to allow notebook to access /home and /MyMusic on desktop and to allow desktop to access /home and /windows on laptop.

please be as specific as you can stand to be, i'm am really new at this. i've only ever configured a router and computers to internet before. (things like "open file.config in kwrite and add 'some_configuration' to ...." would be helpfull). sorry i'm being so detailed but i've had some really lame answers from other forums recently.

[linuxdork]

hello? Is anyone out there?

[drakebasher]

We're here. Okay, if I understand, you have wireless internet access at your notebook and the first target is to provide internet access to the desktop through the notebook? Don't ask how much time I spent finding this information. If you can ping each computer from the other, the only thing besides an hour keeping your from that is this (just to save you time, check section 2. Cut-n-paste works...).

If that doesn't do it, lspci tells you what is on your pci bus (hopefully, a network adapter). lsmod will install a driver in case you don't have the right one. for futher instructions on that, see paragraph 3.d. here.

And if you don't know what any of this means, just speak up and share what you do know.
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[linuxdork]

thank you, i don't have time to look at it right now but i will tonight when i get home. Just so you know, I have been looking for this kind of help for more than a week at four different forums and you are the first one to be so accommodating. I will let you know how it goes. thank you again.

[linuxdork]

I haven't read those links yet but i just read ifconfig on both machines and there is no inet6 addr: entry for either. so i am guessing that means that they are both trying to connect to each other as clients and so they are not getting the info straight. am I right. so then once again I am guessing, I probably have to add an IP address to the laptop for the desktop to receive? I will read those links and see if it answers this.

[drakebasher]

inet6? I'm not sure we want that. I'm pretty new to all of this myself, but this is what I think you need (with plain inet or IPv4 or whatever):

You will have pretty much a plain vanilla setup for your desktop. You need to set the gateway address to the address of the notebook or else you need to make eth0 in the desktop "promiscuous" (see man page for ifconfig).

The notebook, of course, must have access to the internet and I assume you have that part worked out.

The next part is to get the notebook to pass along packets issued by and intended for the desktop. That's called masqurade and/or NAT. I think there's a difference, but I don't think that's important at this time. The link to "Simple Masquerade HOWTO" has code for configuring the iptable to make this happen. Being just about burnt out on reading HOWTOs that explain how to rewire the internet, I found that one just a couple of days ago and was thrilled to see that I could just cut and paste the code for the dial-up configuration with only minor modification and I was suddenly receiving internet on two computers independantly through one phone line. So I know it works. But it didn't work for me last night when I tried to repeat it to do a download system install, so there are sublties yet to be resolved. I would greatly appreciate your sharing your results and sources as I intend to do. I'm sorry that I'm not yet able to comment on setting the DNS for either or both computers, but I'll be working on that tonight.

[linuxdork]

I don't know if you know but I'm using suse 9.2. I found this great HOWTO at http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/11505.html
that explains how to turn you computer into a router using suse linux. I did all that but I'm having some problems with my software. I can see how it works a lot better now though. Even if you are not using suse I would recommend reading it just to better understand. I'm going to give your link a try now and see what I get.