HansCees.com

Make a Gateway with E-Smith linux and mxstream adsl NHF/ Howto
version 1.3 -- 20 may 2001 -- An NHF is a Newbieized Help File.

Update per june 2003: I now use esmith 5.6 with an iptables script with two pci nics. The iptables script is here. This howto will remain at this adress unaltered so people can find it back. hc

By Hans-Cees Speel
You can email me about this howto at hansceesAThanscees.com (AT=@). P)lease let me know what you think and especially if you liked it!!

USING E-SMITH (REDHAT 6.1) AS GATEWAY, FIREWALL AND NAT WITH MXSTREAM AND PLANET.NL

This howto shows how to set up e-smith (www.e-smith.com and www.e-smith.org) system as a firewall/gateway behind which you can set up your internal network of multiple computers. For it to work you only need 1 NIC!!!! I DO NOT USE 2 ethernetcards!!!
All issues with this setup have been solved and it is save to use it.

This howto has four parts:

Contents
0. 00. Don't you need a floppy firewall?
A. 0. Intro
B. I. Why E-Smith?
C. Setting up the system and setting up an isa nic
D. Configuring a gateway with mxstream and planet
E. II. Links to other howtos if you think this one sucks
F. III. Working with it: backing up, login scripts and so on.

Back to contents Back to Intro | Back to Why E-Smith? | Back to Setting up the system and setting up an isa nic | Back to Configuring a gateway with mxstream and planet | Back to Howto make the mxstream connection work | Back to What files are involved | Back to How does it work? | Back to Step one: prepare and ftp in the files | Back to What files to place where? | Back to Trouble shooting if something does not work right away.
0.

Don't you need a floppy firewall?

When I wrote this NHF e-smith was the best solution for mxstream, and there were no easy alternatives. This has changed in may 2001 however because the isp has changed some things in the connection. At this time I recommend the following: If you need only a gateway for mxstream with some firewalling for your computers behind it; use3 floppyfirewall at http://www.lintegrate.nl/

You don't need a hard-drive and if it works with your nics, it will be fatser to sert up than esmith.

However, if you need a gateway that can also do emailserving, webserving and all the other things you can do with linux, stich to e-smith. And yes my description works with all versions because it only relies on simple scripting.

A good source (the best) for linux and adsl with mxstream is http://adsl4linux.nl/links.shtml. Check it out. I have heard that the prorgam they write can be used with e-smith as well. So if you want , go check it out! It might be bettter than my solution. Just make sure you get the job done! A.

Intro: what does gateway mean to you?

I don't know what it means to you. But to me a gateway is a system that transports information on behalf of a range of other systems. In other words, in this case a gateway is a computer that has a direct connection to the internet (well through adsl). It shares this connection with an internal network of computers (at least one) and acts as a firewall at the same time. In this case the gateway can also host a www server and has an e-mail server. It has most of these things our of the box, but being a linux system you can change everything you like and more.

Why E-Smith?

- The install really takes less then 5 minutes. If you have the boot-up floppy and the cd.
- Once installed and configured you have a working ftp server, a working samba thing (don't mess with those error-prone files yourself), a working apache server and so on. On top of that there is no need for rebuilding the kernel to get a gateway going.
- The whole thing can be configured with your browser
- It has ibays
- It has no overhead in programs and so on you do not need
- it has a email server that is top-secure (q-mail)
- it is generally secure
- it just takes less time
- it runs on a 486
- it is faster than windows 2000 (I tried)
- it is very cool
- if you need a server system it is a lot better than a whole distro because of less slack
- If you have the skill you can add everything a linux system can have.

Bad things:

- you need to download 200 megs (no big deal with mxstream)
- you need to burn it on a cd-rom
- you cannot configure system-things in kde, just a prompt
- not all nics (networkcards) work. Isa cards need to be configured by hand (but i lead you through that below) and not all pci cards are covered.
- you cannot dual boot with something else like windows 98; the e-smith wipes your hard-disk clean.

Setting up the basic linux system.

I First you want to get the server up.

Install:
Download the cd, burn it and make the install floppy (it is on the cd in /bootimages) You can use http://www.winimage.com/download.htm this link to get a util that writed floppies in windows.

Put the floppy in your computer, install the cd in the cd rom drive and install. Be sure to know that this erases everything on your computer. Somewhere it will ask for a password.

Second, boot it up and it will get you to the prompt. There you can log in as admin or as root. As admin you get to configure the server. As root you get a prompt where you can do things. Good to know if you want to adjust stuff.

First log in as admin and set your ip addresses and so on. In my case the internal nic of the sever is at 192.168.0.1 mask 255.255.255.0. The mxstream modem has been re-set at 192.168.0.100. Because this is easier later on with routing. If you plan to use e-smith as gateway fo rmxstream it is crucial that you make the box a dedicated server with or without internet connection. If you make it a gateway now you will never get it working later with pptp (vpn). Make sure eth0 is on the internal network.

You should reset the ip address of the alcatel adsl-modem if you want smith to be a gateway for mxstream:

Surf to http://10.0.0.138, while not logged into mxstream or pptp (vpn). You will see a sort of homepage. Click on initial set-up and add the ip address (I use 192.168.0.100) and mask (255.255.255.0).
Save it and that is it.

II Installing an ISA-NIC (no plug and pray)

The e-smith only supports some pci cards, but no isa cards out of the box. Since I am poor I use a realtek ne2000 compatible isa card. Also because my computer (an oldie) has no pci.

In my case I e-mailed a lot with e-smith and the bulletin boards on www.e-smith.org. You can use the search button to search for answers already given in the past. There I found out the following things:

A. The ethernetnics are called eth0 and EthernetDriver1 and eth1 and EthernetDriver2.
B. You can use pico to edit text files, for instance pico /etc/conf.modules (if you login as root)
C. The file /home/e-smith/configuration is the master configuration file. Here you can get clues as to what is going on. Also on the page www.e-smith.org/content/architecture/

To install a isa ne2000nic with i/o address 220 and irq 9 (you can usually set this in dos with tools deliverted with the driver disk.), do this while logged in as root:

echo options ne io=0x220 irq=9 >> /etc/conf.modules

This writes the line after echo to the conf.modules file.

You can leave out the irq=9 if you want. Of course you need to adjust this for the settings of your nic. This tells linux that the module ne can be used to load a nic with these properties.

But linux does not know what this module is for. We can change that by doing

/sbin/e-smith/config set EthernetDriver1 ne
/sbin/e-smith/signal-event console-save

Be sure to type EthernetDrive1 and not Ethernetdrive1 or ethernetdrive1. The stuff is case-sensitive!! How do I know? I did it wrong cause I am a lazy typist.

If you do this wrong you can find three nics in the master configuration file. You can delete one by doing

/sbin/e-smith/config delete ethernetdrive1
or whatever mistake you made. I think you can also just edit the config file with pico.

You can see if it worked by doing
modprobe ne
and you should see all kinds of info matching you card.

Of course you can do all this with other nic's too as long as there modules are in the /lib/modules/2.2.16-3/net directory. What modules your card needs? I don't know, ask around.

restart the network with
/etc/rc.d/init.d/network reload

Of course you can also use lots of other commands like
ifconfig
route
init 6 (reboots the computer)
and so on.

OK, if you have configured the ip address of the first local card (eht0 you will see with ifconfig that it has an ip adddress and you should be able to ping the network form your card.
ping 192.168.0.3
kill the pinging with
control-c

If you have the network connection you can now see the magic of this e-smith system.

II The magic of e-smith server.

There you must enter your password. (by the way just doing 192.168.0.2 gives you the webserver)

And then: BEHOLD THE MIRACLE

Cool huh! How about making a linux server easy.

Compiling

The official e-smith server does not have compile possibilities and you should keep it that way. There are numerous rpm's you can use and you can compile binaries on another system and use those. However if you must compile things on the e-smith your should download a bunch of rpms and install them as described here in the faq:
Get then from a redhat mirror LIKE
download.xs4all.nl
the following rpm's:

cpp
egcs
egcs-c++
make
kernel-headers
glib-devel
glibc-devel

if you install these you can compile

Howto make the mxstream connection work.

A. What files are involved
B. I. How does it work?
C. Step one: prepare and ftp in the files
D. What files to place where?
E. Trouble shooting if something does not work right away.

Back to contents Back to Intro | Back to Why E-Smith? | Back to Setting up the system and setting up an isa nic | Back to Configuring a gateway with mxstream and planet | Back to Howto make the mxstream connection work | Back to What files are involved | Back to How does it work? | Back to Step one: prepare and ftp in the files | Back to What files to place where? | Back to Trouble shooting if something does not work right away.
This part explains how to set up the e-smith system with mxstream adsl specific for planet internet with 1 ip address.

If you have trouble I can also recommend the program at http://adsl4linux.nl/links.shtml which should work with e-smith. If you get it to work ok, please let me know.

If you have an account with more ip addresses or with xs4all or both first look here more ip addresses . You could also use this guide for other redhat systems and so on, and use it for xs4all. Of course you will have to change the options.adsl file and chap-secrets file some more as i describe below. Beware that e-smith has a kernell that allows masquerading and that your redhat may not depending how you installed it. Beware that this guide assumes your ethernetcard (nic is working and has an ip of 192.168.0.2.
This part of the guide is based on the guide by Phons Bloemen at http://home.planet.nl/~bloem462/
But I have tried to make his comments more explicit.

What files are involved?

/etc/rc.d/init.d/adsl
/usr/sbin/pptp
/usr/sbin/pptp_callmgr (new I forgot that one in the last version of this howto)
/etc/chap-secrets
/etc/ppp/options.adsl
/etc/ppp/ip-down.local
/etc/ppp/ip-up.local
/etc/rc.d/rc.firewallbigup3
/usr/local/sbin/mtr

For a short understanding what these do:

Back to contents Back to Intro | Back to Why E-Smith? | Back to Setting up the system and setting up an isa nic | Back to Configuring a gateway with mxstream and planet | Back to Howto make the mxstream connection work | Back to What files are involved | Back to How does it work? | Back to Step one: prepare and ftp in the files | Back to What files to place where? | Back to Trouble shooting if something does not work right away.
The adsl script is started when the system boots. It starts after the network is brought up and thus the eth0 device (nic). Adsl starts the vpn (pptp) connection to the adsl modem and thus the ppp0 device. You can find this device with the ifconfig command if it exists. If pptp is started, this also starts pppd (the ppp deamon and ppp is the protocol for modem connections). When pppd starts it runs /etc/ip-up (type man pppd at the prompt to see more and q to get our of man). Ip-up has a link to /etc/-ip-up/local. Ip-up.local starts up the firewall (/etc/rc.d/rc.firewallbigup) and ipmasq (NAT) script that makes sure your system acts as a gateway. Before it starts up the firewall it also starts /etc/ppp/options.adsl.

If the connection goes down and pptp terminates, /etc/ip-down is run and this can be used to kill some deamons and other stuff.
Also every ten minutes a script runs to check if the connection still works. If not it will end the connection and try to set it up again. This is done by running adsl check every ten minutes, which hruns a sort of ping command (mtr) to check if there is a connection.

That is about it. The /etc/chap-secrets script also holds a password, but I think it is not really needed. Anyone with comments can email me about that.

Prepare and ftp in the files.

Back to contents Back to Intro | Back to Why E-Smith? | Back to Setting up the system and setting up an isa nic | Back to Configuring a gateway with mxstream and planet | Back to Howto make the mxstream connection work | Back to What files are involved | Back to How does it work? | Back to Step one: prepare and ftp in the files | Back to What files to place where? | Back to Trouble shooting if something does not work right away.
It is a good idea to prepare all needed files listed above and found below, on your computer and then ftp them into the e-smith server. This ftp-ing can be done from the internal network. You could use any ftp client (I use http://tucows.wau.nl/preview/424.html ws-ftp) and ftp to 192.168.0.2 as anonymous or admin. Then all you need to do is copy them to their directories, chmod them (set file permissions) and trouble shoot.
If you take the primairy folder in the ftp directory of the e-smith server you will be in /home/e-smith/files/primary/files. I advise however to use the users/admin/home folder since no-one else can look in there even if you open up your ftp to outside. In e-smith that is at /home/e-smith/files/users/admin/home/
You can do all prompt work on the server by telnetting to the e-smith server and logging in from the internal network. So you do not need a monitor really. You can do that by typing telnet 192.168.0.2 (or your ip number)on a dos prompt in windows.
So now, go on and get all the files you need in one zip packet here: adsl package zipped here.
Remember to adjust the files ad stated below or they will not work at all for you!!

adjust the following files in the following way:

1. adsl
take adsl and
replace 192.168.0.100 with the ip number of the adsl modem you use three times.

2. put the line
/etc/rc.d/init.d/adsl
in your /etc/rc.d/rc.local script.

3. adjust /etc/chap-secrets or /etc/pap-secrets so that
user@adsl-comfort * mammyiamhome *
these two words with user and mammy are replaced your login name and password with your provider for mxstream

4. The file options.adsl should look like this:
idle 0
noauth
user user@adsl-comfort
usepeerdns
defaultroute
ipparam adsl
linkname adsl
Where the user@adsl-comfort should be replaced with your adsl loginname.

5. The file
/etc/ppp/ip-up.local
should contain the lines:
#!/bin/bash
/etc/rc.d/rc.firewallbigup3
6. 6 is history 7. ip-down.local: make sure you change 192.168.0.100 with the ip of your modem!!

#!/bin/bash
logger THIS IS the ipdownscript &
echo " - Flushing all old rules and setting all default policies to REJECT "
/sbin/ipchains -F input
/sbin/ipchains -F output
/sbin/ipchains -F forward

logger Set default policies to reject
/sbin/ipchains -P input reject
/sbin/ipchains -P output reject
/sbin/ipchains -P forward reject
logger rulesets are flushed &
killall pptp
killall pppd
rm -rf /var/run/pptp/192.168.0.100

8. The last file to adjust before ftp-ing them into the box is the firewall. rc.firewallbigup3 is here: as a firewallscript in text It is crucial that you change the following things here:
EXTIP="10.194.0.xxx" should become the ip of your external ppp0 interface.
EXTBROAD="10.194.0.255" should become the ip of your external ppp0 interface with the last three numbers being 255
DGW="195.190.241.xx" should be the interface you get at the other side of the ppp line. You can see that when the ppp0 is up and you do ifconfig.

INTIP="192.168.0.xxx" should be the internal ip address of your eth0 card.
INTLAN="192.168.0.0/24" should be the internal lan range. If your card is in the 192.168.0.xxx range you are ok.
The file will need adjusting if you want access from the internet to your box. At this time only http is open and ntp to allow time updates.

What files need to be placed where?

1. Use the script 'installit' which will call the script 'rechten'. If you do this, follow these steps:

1a. Adjust all files in the zip archive as described above. FTP them in the directory /users/admin/home. This is crucial, for the scrips to work!!!! If not you must adjust the scripts.
1b. On the prompt of e-smith do
cd /home/e-smith/files/users/admin/home/
chmod 751 ./installit
This will make the script executable.
Then run the script:
./installit
It should not give any errors. If it does please make sure you check upon them because obviously something went wrong. And let me know as well if you can.

If there are no errors you can restart by doing
init 6
and all should work!!
You should later-on do point 10 below because that is not yet done. This makes sure your gateway checks the line every 10 minutes to see if it is up. If something goes wrong, go to trouble shooting. You can also check if all files are where they should be with the apropriate permissions. But I bet that will not be the problem if you got no errors.

2. Do it by Hand:
1.
adsl (its contence is below) Must be placed as:
etc/rc.d/init.d/adsl

In linux copying is done with the cp command. For instance:
cp /etc/ppp/1 /etc/ppp/test/1
copies file 1 from /etc/ppp to /etc/ppp/test/

type chmod 700 /etc/rc.d/init.d/adsl
Make sure you adjust the script to your own ip number of the cable modem. Mine was 192.168.0.100, so you need to replace that number three times.
Put the line
/etc/rc.d/init.d/adsl start
in the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local

Remember that you can adjust files in e-smith with pico, so you can do
pico /etc/rc.d/rc.local
and save with control-o

2.
pptp and pptp_callmgr should be in:
/usr/sbin/pptp and /usr/sbin/pptp_callmgr
and you should chmod 700 it.

You can get the (patched) binary at:
http://www.guru4hire.nl/adsl/, compiled for libc6/i386.
But it is also in my zipfile.

Two more ways to do this are here including a solution from e-smith which is still beta though
3.
You must copy chap-secrets to
/etc/chap-secrets
and (chmod 700) it. 4.
4 is gone

5.
Copy ip-up.local to:
/etc/ppp/ip-up.local
chmod 700?

6. is history

7.
There should be a
/etc/ppp/ip-down.local
with chmod 700

8.
The firewall should be at
/etc/rc.d/rc.firewallbigup3
and be chmod 700

9.
You should have mtr in /usr/sbin with chmod 700.

mtr can be downloaded here:
http://www.bitwizard.nl/mtr/.

10.
The command adsl check sees every ten minutes if the line is up. You can arrange that with e-smith by doing:

export VISUAL=pico
crontab -e
0-59/10 * * * * /etc/rc.d/init.d/adsl check

If all goes well the prompt answers with 'installing new crontab'.

Trouble shooting how it all works.

Back to contents Back to Intro | Back to Why E-Smith? | Back to Setting up the system and setting up an isa nic | Back to Configuring a gateway with mxstream and planet | Back to Howto make the mxstream connection work | Back to What files are involved | Back to How does it work? | Back to Step one: prepare and ftp in the files | Back to What files to place where? | Back to Trouble shooting if something does not work right away.
OK, so you have done all I sais and it didn't work. It happens. Thankfully a lot didn't work for me too thefirst time, so i can give some tips. Please also check the site of guide by Phons Bloemen at http://home.planet.nl/~bloem462/ for an other angle of how it works.
The thing with trouble shooting is to analyse what does, and what does not work. And then focus on the problem. Steps you can check out are as follows.
1. if you do
IFconfig
do you see an eth0 or eth1? If not your nic is not seen by linux. If you have both you have two nics: and my guide is only for one nic!! If you have no eht0 or eth1 you should check the e-smith main configuration file ( /home/e-smith/configuration) and the /etc/conf.modules file. Is the right module coupled to the card with the right irq and i/o? Better double check.

2. So ifconfig shows your nic with its ip address. So can you ping the alcatel modem from your nic? If not can you ping the modem from another computer? Did you wire everything allright?

3. If you can ping the alcatel modem, can you set up your pptp session alright? You can if
ifconfig
shows a ppp0 device. Usually if your password is wrong, this is where it goes wrong. Try to make a pap-secrets and see if that works. Make sure you have only letters and numbers in your password, and no /£$% and so on!!
Try to do /etc/rc.d/init.d/adsl check. You can also try
/usr/sbin/pptp 192.168.0.100 file /etc/ppp/options.adsl
Of course with the ip address of your alcatel modem. Does the options.adsl file have the right chmod permissions? You can check this by doing
ls -all
in the /etc/ppp/ directory. It should have -rwx to begin with. Check the logfile /var/run/messages. Does ppp connect to a tty device and then stop? I bet your /etc/ppp/chaps-secret file has a chmod problem or does not begin with #!/bin/bash. Did you put your userid and password in there?

Also good to check is if all files in this list (/etc/ppp/ip-up; ip-up.local; rc.firewallbigup3)can be executed manually. Do /etc/ppp/ip-up. If that does not yield the firewall to go up (you can see that because it yields a lot of lines in the command prompt that will automatically scroll by) chekc the file permissions of these files (see above, they should be executable) and change the first line #!/bin/sh in #!/bin/bash or the other way around. 4. OK, you get a ppp0 device but you cannot ping to the internet (you checked www.microsoft.com? They do not return pings you know? They are scared you will bring them down if they do:-)).
If you have the ppp0 device try to see what ip address ppp0 has. Ping that. OK? I hope so. Try to ping the point-to point address that ifconfig sais you are connected to. No juice?
If you cannot ping those, do
route
You should see a line like default 195.190.241.321 of something like that. This can be the ip of the ppp0 deivce or the point-to point peer address. If not it can be that /etc/sysconfig/network has a wrong gateway ip set or a wrong device. It should be ppp0 and the p-t-p ip address you can see in you ifconfig.
If there is no line with default set a default route by doing something like (check man route)
route add default gw 190.195.... dev ppp0(your p-t-p adress)
You should be able to ping now at least to start.mxstream.nl
If you cannot it can be that /etc/nsswitch.conf has an error in it. There should be a line 'hosts file dns'. If it only sais 'hosts file' change it by adding 'dns' to it. This tells the machine to use dns for name lookup. You can change it by doing pico /etc/nsswitch.conf and saving the change by o. You should also change the template file /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/nsswitch.conf/template-begin so the error will not return later when you change settings and e-smith regenerates its settings.

5. There was a step here but now it is gone since mxsrteam changed some things.

6. You can ping to the world but the computers behind your server cannot.
In this case, first check they can ping to the e-smith gateway. If they can, and the e-smith can ping the world there is a problem with the /etc/rc.d.init.d/rc.firewallbigup3 script. First check if it runs manually. do
/etc/rc.d/init.d/rc.firewallbigup
This should give you all kinds of output on your screen. If you get an error check if your script has the right chmod (-rwx). Is the first line
!/bin/bash ? If it runs alright, see if /etc/ppp/ip-up.local causes it to run, and if ip-up does. In theory ip-up calls ip-up.local, which calls rc.firewallbigup3.
If the script runs fine, but you still cannot internet on the computers behind your e-smith gateway, check and double-check the ip addresses in the firewall script. If that fails, grab your checkbook and call e-smith:-) They make a great system, so help them while they help you. Or check out this link where the script was derived from.

You can also email me, but depending on how busy i am i might help. You can also call a doktor and take some valium, or better read a good book and decide life is not so bad without the internet.

that's it fooks! Please email me with mistakes you find here.
Back to contents Back to Intro | Back to Why E-Smith? | Back to Setting up the system and setting up an isa nic | Back to Configuring a gateway with mxstream and planet | Back to Howto make the mxstream connection work | Back to What files are involved | Back to How does it work? | Back to Step one: prepare and ftp in the files | Back to What files to place where? | Back to Trouble shooting if something does not work right away.

Extra:

compiling PPtP and e-smith beta rpm's There is now (20-11-2000)a alpha pptp rpm for pptp at the e-smith ftp server. I recommend this is only used for testing. The following applies:

Charlie Brady has made a set of packages available that may help our friends in France and Belgium who must set up PPTP to use their ADSL connections. It did not work for me, and the adsllogin.pl staep is not included. But of course you may trie.
The two required RPMs can be found in my contrib area:

ftp://ftp.e-smith.org/pub/e-smith/contrib/charlieb/RPMS/
. The RPMs required are:
noarch/noarch/e-smith-pptp-adsl-0.1-2.noarch.rpm
i386/pptp-adsl-1.0.2-1es.i386.rpm
To activate these RPMs, you need to first configure the username and
password to be used for the PPTP access:
/sbin/e-smith/config set DialupUserAccount 'xxxxxx'
/sbin/e-smith/config set DialupUserPassword 'yyyyyyy'
then configure the system for dedicated mode - this configures the
ethernet interface. When you reboot your system it might connect
successfully to your supplier.
Warning: this is a work-in-progress alpha release. It comes with no
warranty whatsover. It hasn't even been tested.
These packages will only work for PPTP over ADSL systems with the server
located at 10.0.0.138. Please let me know if you encounter a system which
is configured differently.

You can also compile pptp yourself. You should have a bunch of rpms installed (see above) as glib and so on. This is not recommended!!

To make pptp yourself go to
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sessin01/
and get
pptp-linux-1.0.2-mxstream.tar.gz
Or check adsl4linux.com and check their links and stuff and get it somewhere else.

ftp the files or binary into e-smith.
If you take the primairy folder in the ftp you will be in
/home/e-smith/files/primary/files
do
cp /home/e-smith/files/primary/files/pptp-linux-1.0.2-mxstream.tar.gz /root
go to the /root directory if you are not already there.
cd /root
see with ls if the file is there. If yes do
tar -xzvf pptp-linux-1.0.2-mxstream.tar.gz

It should show you what it unpacked.
cd config_e-smith-pptp
should bring you to the right directory

There you must do
make
and after compiling the pptp file can be copied to
/usr/sbin
and do
chmod 700 /usr/sbin/pptp

Back to Howto make the mxstream connection work | Back to What files are involved | Back to How does it work? | Back to Step one: prepare and ftp in the files | Back to What files to place where? | Back to Trouble shooting if something does not work right away.
A.

Links: other sites you might want to use when troubleshooting linux and adsl in the netherlands.

guide by Phons Bloemen at http://home.planet.nl/~bloem462/ for an other angle of how it works.
adsl4linux site met links and more, program that could work with e-smith as well.
bovendelft site met links
site met linux scripts voor snel installeren (wellicht werkt het wel met esmith)
guide by Phons Bloemen at http://home.planet.nl/~bloem462/ for an other angle of how it works.
guide by Phons Bloemen at http://home.planet.nl/~bloem462/ for an other angle of how it works.
Newsgroups:
xs4all.adsl
planet.adsl

More IP adresses

If you have an account with more ip adresses, or an xs4all account you can still use this guide but with some changes.
If you have more ip adresses and you can almost use this guide for ip adress 1. This is because in linux, the pptp program has the suffix 'pc1' hardcoded in the binary (don task me why I am just the messenger, I know this is stupid). So if you want to use ip adress 2,3 and 4 the binary needs to be changed in pc2, pc3 and so on. You can do this by using an hexeditor which you can find here:
http://www.tu-darmstadt.de/~rkibria Just change pc1 in pc2, pc3 or pc4. And do not forget that it is not unlike the kpn to 'forget' to make these accounts working so you can phone them too if things do not work.

Also try adsl4linux.com for binaries with more ip adresses. If you can do that, you can also use this guide.

Working with E-smith

Here are some tips to work with the e-smith server as a file server in an everyday situation. I got these from the help forums at www.e-smith.org and thought it would be helpfull to mention these. You can find lots more stuff by browsing the pages at esmith.org.

Tip1: disable atalk (if you do not have apple machines around.)
> could somebody please tell me how do I eliminate > (for good) the ATALK service? For 4.0 - rpm -e --nodeps netatalk For 4.1 (in late beta) - just set the atalk service to disabled in /home/e-smith/configuration.

Tip 2: Using login scripts
Just install the e-smith-netlogon RPM by doing "rpm -Uhv ftp://ftp.e-smith.com/pub/e-smith/contrib/charlieb/SRPMS/e-smith-netlogon- 0.1-1.src.rpm"
at your bash prompt Onec you have installed the netlogon rpm just edited /home/netlogon/netlogon.bat Also you must have samba set-up as a primary domain controller and your windows workstations must be set up to log into that domain.

Tip3: doing backup.
Solution A: The server has a good backup option from the web-console. You can read that file by uudecoding it and then reading the tar file that remains. But to do a more regular backup from user files you can do the following:
- Solution b: To use an enterprise level backup software that supports both Linux and NT. Veritas Backup Exec, Cheyenne ARCserve are the best known NT packages. Both offer Linux add-ons. TapeWare and Arkeia are good products as well. In brief you load the backup program of choice on the NT Server and a corresponding backup client on e-smith server. This client allows the NT Server backup software full access to the e-smith hard drive.
- Solution c: Here's a very simplistic procedure that can be used: Map the users server space (the space on the e-smith where the home directories are) locally (on a cleint pc) as a network drive (F:\) create a batch file called c:\backup.bat containing the following "xcopy32 F:\*.* any_removable_drive\*.* /D /E" I use a burner for my removable drive as both the drives and the media are so cheap now. The /d and /e switches tell it to create the directories and only backup files that have been modified. Now schedule it to be run every night at 8.00pm or something using Task Scheduler. 98se and ME both support packet writing out of the box so you will be able to use a CDRW. I have 7 CDRW's that are swapped every morning. Six are kept in the safe or taken home.

Tip 4: dialing in on e-smith.
Check out http://e-smith.50megs.com/dialin.html

Tip 5: Doing a network install:
You should use the bootnet image that's on the cd-rom. The installation uses kickstart and the only supported network installation with kickstart is through nfs. So if you've got a unix system with a cd-rom player on your network you could export the cd-rom as an nfs volume with the parameters that are in the kickstart file on the bootnet floppy (or, the other way around, adjust the kickstart file to your nfs parameters). Alternatively, you can run an ftp or web server on any computer on your network and serve the cd-rom through that. In that case you cannot use kickstart, so you have to delete the reference to it in syslinux.cfg on your bootnet floppy (the part that reads: ks=floppy:install.cfg). This way you'll get a standard RedHat network installation and you can choose your installation media and specify your NIC (many ISA NICs supported). Before doing this you should print the kickstart file that's on the floppy you created (install.cfg) or on the cd-rom and simply do manually what kickstart would have done automatically. You can do the post-install after rebooting. After doing the post-install and rebooting again, you'll boot into e-smith. First enter a root password, start configuration and when you're asked to configure your NICs, go to Alt-F2, log in as root w/ your new password and execute the commands /sbin/e-smith/config set EthernetDriver1 e.g. /sbin/e-smith/config set EthernetDriver1 3c509 Set EthernetDriver2 as well. Then do /sbin/e-smith/signal-event console-save Don't bother setting io and IRQ. System will work them out by itself. Now go back to Alt-F1 and configuring your system (OK, cancel first if you're still on the page for configuring your NICs, or your new drivers will not show). Good luck.

Tip 6: sharing ibays:
OK. Here is what I did. I created two shares per ibay. ibayname - shares just the files directory so when I map a drive to \\e-smith\ibayname it maps directly to the files directory. ibayname-all which has all of the dirs (cgi, files, and html).
For e-smith 4.0 or 4.0.1:
1. Telnet into the machine.
2. If it doesn't exist, create the smb custom template directory.
mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/smb.conf
3. Copy existing template files to new directory.
cp /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/smb.conf/* /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/smb.conf. (<- all on one line)
4. Edit the 90ibays file in the new custom template smb dir.
pico /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/smb.conf/90ibays
Change this existing portion:
$result .= "\n";
$result .= "[$key]\n";
$result .= " comment = $properties{'Name'}\n";
$result .= " path = /home/e-smith/files/ibays/$key\n";
$result .= " read only = no\n";
$result .= " writable = yes\n";
$result .= " printable = no\n";
$result .= "\n";
To (notice the -all next to the $key):
$result .= "\n";
$result .= "[$key-all]\n";
$result .= " comment = $properties{'Name'}\n";
$result .= " path = /home/e-smith/files/ibays/$key\n";
$result .= " read only = no\n";
$result .= " writable = yes\n";
$result .= " printable = no\n";
$result .= "\n";
Then directly beneath that, write this (notice the /files after the $key):
$result .= "\n";
$result .= "[$key]\n";
$result .= " comment = $properties{'Name'}\n";
$result .= " path = /home/e-smith/files/ibays/$key/files\n";
$result .= " read only = no\n";
$result .= " writable = yes\n";
$result .= " printable = no\n";
$result .= "\n";
4. Save the file and exit pico.
5. Expand the new template.
/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/smb.conf<>
6. Then restart the smb service.
service smb restart
That should do it. Hopefully I didn't make any mistakes. Check out: http://www.e-smith.org/content/custom/ for more information on customizing your e-smith installation. Dan Elkins
Tip 7: Get email from various pop locations into e-smith qmail.
If you are ok with using the command line internet "Unix" try this
in you root directory "/root/" make a file called .fetchmailrc "pico /root/.fetchmailrc"
In this file edit this code and save it
######################################################
poll mail.yourisp.net.au with proto POP3 # see command "man fetchmail"
user ispusername there with password isp_password is localusername
here options
flush fetchall
smtphost mail.host.net.au
# Makes fetchmail poll - 20 min or 1200 seconds
set daemon 1200
######################################################

or another example ######################################################
poll mail.yourisp.net.au with proto POP3
# account1@domain1
user ispusername there with password isp_password is localusername@mydomain.com
here options
flush fetchall
smtphost mail.host.net.au
# account2@domain1
user ispusername there with password isp_password is localusername@mydomain.com
here options
flush fetchall
smtphost mail.host.net.au
# Makes fetchmail poll - 20 min or 1200 seconds
set daemon 1200
Tip 8:

Get to Know Linux

Just pretty photos