I'm revising this post to clarify since I'm clearly just learning....

Humbly asking for assistance:

I'm somewhat of a newbie here but have been eagerly reading posts for some time. Here is my ordeal: I've spent the past two days trying to install IPcop on the following system and am starting to lose my hair over it (as in, I'm ripping it out):

IPcop Linux box is:
Dell Dimension XPS, 200 P-Pro, 40 MB ram, 2 gig drive
w/ 2 Realtek 8139 PCI ethernet cards

The system I'm trying to protect is a:
Homebuilt, P4 1.4, 256 MB ram, 60 gig drive, running Win2k
w/ 1 Intel Pro+ PCI ethernet card

My connection:
Cable Modem - DHCP connection

Where I'm at now:
I was able to get the iso image of IPcop burned to CD and installed onto the Dell box. When going through the setup, it autodetected both of my network cards. I've set the red adapter (eth1) up to obtain an IP from my ISP via DHCP. I've set up IPcop's DHCP server as follows for the green adapter (eth0):

Start address: 192.168.168.100
End address: 192.168.168.254
Priimary DNS: 192.168.168.1
Default Lease: 1440
Max Lease: 2880
Domain name suffix: home.com

Here are the problems I'm having:

1. I don't think that the IPcop Linux box is negotiating an IP from my ISP. When I type ifconfig when I'm logged in as root, I get:

eth0 Link encap: Ethernet Hwaddr xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
inet addr: 192.168.168.1 Bcast: 192.168.168.255 Mask: 255.255.255.0
Interrupt: 10 Base address: 0xfc00

lo Link encap: Local Loopback

So, it doesn't look like the red adapter (eth1) negotiated an IP from my ISP. I'm not able to ping any of the ISP's servers or any other internet address for that matter.

When I type ifconfig -a, I can see that eth1 is in fact installed at Interrupt 9 and Base address: 0xf800. It just doesn't have an inet addr, Bcast, or Mask as eth0 does.

2. When I connect my green adapter to P4 box via a crossover cable, I get no lights, nothing, nada. I'm thinking that this is probably also due to the problems in #1 above but am not sure. I can't even get my P4 to ping the lPcop box when they are connected via crossover cable.


Again, I've revised this post because I don't think I explained myself well the first time and I'm just hoping someone out there can help me before I throw this thing out the window

This was an inadvertant post.....sorry.

When you installed IPCop, at network config for the RED interface, did you fill in the static address you used before you set up IPCop or when you selected DHCP, did you fill in your "original" hostname and not the generic "ipcop"? Did it ask for a DHCP server address for the RED interface?

//Mod.note Btw, I'm moving this to networking, as this question ain't about security.

I initially put in under security as I was thinking IPcop was a firewall. You were right on to move it though because my question focused more on the networking issues that were arising from it.

As for your recommendations, I had it appropriately configured to obtain a lease from my ISP's DHCP server. I think I just figured it out though after perusing some other web forums. Apparently, some ISP's actually record the hardware address of your ethernet card when you initially sign up with them. I just swapped one of the RTK cards that was in my IPcop box with the card from the P4 box that they initially configured my accounts with. Now that there DHCP server is seeing the right hardware physical address on the red adapter of IPcop, it all seems to be working spiffily.

At least, that is my best guess at what fixed it.

Thanks so much for all the help.

Excellent you found it yourself. This would've been my next thing to tell you to look at, swapping cards... It's the NIC's MAC address you see, that get's you the registered IP addy from the pool...

Thanks man. I'm just pretty jazzed that it's all working now.