Home Network Linux Workstation

The Linux workstation will use much the same configuration steps we used on the Linux server. The major difference between the server and the workstation, is the workstation does not need Samba installed.

For the sake of this tutorial, lets assume you have not setup the name and IP address during installation of Linux. We will then go to the files concerned and make the changes there.

IP address

To start the network configuration have a look at the file: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

    DEVICE=
    BOOTPROTO=
    BROADCAST=
    IPADDR=
    NETMASK=
    NETWORK=
    ONBOOT=

The lines in this file specify how the network will be configured. Here is a brief explaination of these lines:

  1. DEVICE , we are interested in the Ethernet card.
  2. BOOTPROTO , type of ethernet card.
  3. BROADCAST , what the network does when it starts up.
  4. IPADDR , the ip address of this machine
  5. NETMASK , the filter which says how large a range of address to use.
  6. NETWORK , The beginning address of your network.
  7. ONBOOT , should the networking be initialized at boot up?

For our configuration this machine is the server, so it’s configuration should be changed to:

    DEVICE=eth0
    BOOTPROTO=static
    BROADCAST=192.168.1.255
    IPADDR=192.168.1.7
    NETMASK=255.255.255.0
    NETWORK=192.168.1.0
    ONBOOT=yes

Host name and Gateway

The next file we will modify is: /etc/sysconfig/network

    NETWORKING=
    HOSTNAME=
    GATEWAY=

Here is a quick definition of the entries in this file.

  • NETWORKING , do you want networking?
  • HOSTNAME , is the name of the computer.
  • GATEWAY , this will be the ip address of the firewall.

So for our server install it should say:

    NETWORKING=yes
    HOSTNAME=wizard.home.org
    GATEWAY=192.168.1.254

Once we have made these changes, we should run the command “/etc/rc.d/init.d/network start” to activate them.

Name search Info

You should configure the file /etc/resolv.conf to know who you are and where to find a name server. It should be setup like this:

    domain home.org
    nameserver 192.168.1.254

This tells the system to use the domain home.org and to look for the DNS information on samson.

Testing the Linux Workstation

First, lets see if we can see the Server and Windows boxes. Try the following command: ping -c4 samson . It should return something like this:

PING samson.home.org (192.168.1.254) from 128.209.20.148 : 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from samson.home.org (192.168.1.254): icmp_seq=1 ttl=124 time=2.56 ms
64 bytes from samson.home.org (192.168.1.254): icmp_seq=2 ttl=124 time=1.67 ms
64 bytes from samson.home.org (192.168.1.254): icmp_seq=3 ttl=124 time=1.89 ms
64 bytes from samson.home.org (192.168.1.254): icmp_seq=4 ttl=124 time=1.67 ms

--- samson.home.org ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% loss, time 3025ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.670/1.949/2.560/0.365 ms

This indicates that you are able to contact the Firewall box. You should try the same command for wizard and apollo, assuming they are both turned on.

Next we should see if we can get to the internet through the firewall. Start up a web browser and look for a site like www.google.com. If it comes up, you are in business.



Written by John F. Moore

Last Revised: Wed Oct 18 11:01:34 EDT 2017

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