🚀 go-pugleaf

"Jason A. Ramsey" <jramsey@NOSPAM.tweedinc.com> wrote:

>If you wanted to have your computers on the same network (no routing) that
>would work great.  However, if you wish to route, put two NICS or a dual
>port NIC in the Linux box, give the outside card your real IP address, add
>IP Forwarding, IP Masq, IP (other stuff) to the kernel.  The easiest way to
>connect the 95 box is to set up a class c reserved netowork (fake IP
>192.168.0.0) on the 95 side and use your Linux box as a router.  Windoze 95
>WILL NOT ROUTE under any circunstances.

FWIW, I have just such a network set up at my house, but I have a
problem with it that I've not yet been able to diagnose.  

The network has two Linux boxes and (occasionally) a Win95 laptop.
All of the machines have "fake" IP addresses and one of the Linux
boxes (the dual 200MHz Pentium hotrod) is set up with an external
modem for use with a dialup account.  I have IP-masquerading turned on
so that my lowly Windows box can "see" the net when I'm connected via
the PPP account.  I have been using Netscape for mail, usenet, and
browser on the Linux box.  Everything has been working quite well
until relatively recently.  

When I attempt to fetch news, Netscape reports that I get anywhere
from 39 to 215 bytes (it usually stops at the numbers 39, 211, and
215) and then stalls.  I can't convince it to go on from there, and
when I use dmesg, I see the following message:

MASQ: failed TCP/UDP checksum from 206.86.8.14

I am unable to get beyond this, but have done some troubleshooting.  I
fired up Pine to check to see if it was a netscape problem.  It
doesn't seem to be, since Pine has the same problem.  Then I used
Eudora on the Win95 laptop and attempted to fetch my mail.  It stalls
too, and I get the TCP/UDP checksum error message on the Linux box.
When I attach the modem to the Win95 box (as it is right now), I get
in with no problem.  The baffling parts to me are:

1.  Why did it work for some time and THEN fail?
2.  What can I do to further isolate the problem?  (I've been looking
into poking through the ip_masq.c code)
3.  How can I fix it?

Mindspring, my ISP, has never responded to my questions, even though I
sent them several email messages about this problem.  They don't
support Linux, you see, so I guess they figure they can simply ignore
me without even the courtesy of a reply saying, "We don't support
Linux."  <sigh>

Ed