Need help with configuring a server

[zmzhang]

Hi. I have a wireless router and computers both upstairs and downstairs. The downstairs comptuers connect to the wirless router with both wireless and wired cards. I have one wireless network card for the upstairs comptuers and they are connected together with ethernet. I have a computer with a p1 166mhz, 256mb running windows 2k. That comptuer has the wireless card and i'm using internet connection sharing.
However, this has some problems. I can't attach things to e-mail. can't go to certain websites (such as ebay) and can't log into any of my web based e-mail accounts. Is there a simple solution to this or should I put linux onto it? I did a search online and most of the guides I found are to build linux boxes that converts ethernet to wireless. I want to do the opposite though.

Thanks

 

[drag]

The 166mhz computer is your server?

I am a little confused about your setup so I can't give specific advice. Maybe give your computers names and identify what sort of router they use and so on and so forth.... or something.

But as far as linux people usually have problems with wireless cards compatability. So your success is going to be largely dependant on what type of card you are using. 166mhz is a little slow for desktop usage, but for servers it's fine.

For a OS I suggest installing Fedora Linux, which is what Redhat is calling it's free version (as in price) nowadays. It's modern enough to deal intellegently while using a nic card, it has gui configuration tools so you don't have to mess around with ifconfig and iwconfig if you don't want to. Plus it's easy to turn off X windows when your not using it.

Go to a virtual terminal by pressing ctrl,alt,f(n) were f(n) is the F# buttons F1-F6. Once your their log in as root and type out telinit 3, to turn off X and telinit 5 to turn it back on.

By turning it off you can aviod the performance penalty of running it and still have it aviable to turn on when you want to log in to do administrative work. (as apposed to not installing X in the first place.)

Then you can use Putty.exe to connect to it from you windows computers for a command line, or use VNC to connect to it for a gui (I don't beleive you need to have X windows running to use VNC to connect, it makes up it's own X server/client on the fly).


As far as fixing w2k try: Reinstalling IE, flushing the cache and the history.

You can try to reset TCP/IP. For WinXP you do: "netsh int ip reset ipreset.txt" from the command line. For Win9x you go thru the network configuration stuff in the control panel and uninstall and reinstall TCP/IP. For w2k it's either uninstal/reinstall or the netsh.exe command. I can't remember which.

You can try to run a repair on IE, you do that by going to the uninstal/reinstall programs stuff in the control panel and act like your going to uninstall IE, it will then prompt you if you want to run a repair. But I prefer to simply going to www.microsoft.com and download a new version of IE and installing that. That will reset all the bad mojo in the registry and hopefully fix your issue.

Also update/upgrade your OS to the latest service pack, apply all the patchs etc etc. And run a adaware/spybot scan and make sure that your using the latest virus scanner updates (old ones are useless) etc etc.

That should get everything working again, hopefully.

 

[zmzhang]

Sorry for the confusion. I'll try to visually describe my setup.

cable modem->wireless router ************ 166 server with wireless card->switch->other comptuers

With computers branching off the wireless router as well

The wireless card is a D-Link DWL-520+, would that run on Fedora?

For 2k. I'll try to reset the TCP/IP. It has all the patches and I haven't installed any additional programs. I'll reinstall IE and see what happens.

Thanks

 

[drag]

I think you have a decent chance of it working.

The trouble with that particular card is because there were 3 actual different cards that have that name... or something like that.

try looking here for details

 

[n0cmonkey]

It *might*. It appears that the DWL-520+ is using a texas intruments chipset, and unfortunately TI is fairly hostile to open source software.

http://acx100.sourceforge.net/ appears to have alpha (at best) level drivers. They have been anecdotally considered "stable."

http://luca.pca.it/projects/acx100/ also has some drivers (I don't know if there is any relation between the projects). They were also considered good in the google search I did.

Finally, http://www.linuxant.com/ has produced a piece of software for some chipsets, of which this particular TI chipset is listed. I believe it uses a Windows driver on Linux. But it isn't free. It also costs $20USD, but there is a free trial to make sure it works first.

I'm going to be doing something similar soon, but using OpenBSD and a better (free drivers available) WNIC.

HTH, GL, and any other good acronym that might apply.