Is WLAN Internet sharing via LAN possible?

I try to get the following to work, I tried searching for a solution for that on the web, on Linux forums, and even posted a question about it on the Linux forum for my very Linux, all to no avail.

My systems:
i586 - System Slackware based Porteus 4.0 with Port 3.1 kernel (kernel version), any tried newer kernels crash at boot time, mono core Intel CPU U1400 @ 1.20GHz, overall limited capabilities:
x86-64 - System Slackware based Porteus 5.0 with 5.4.30 kernel (that is the newest I managed to compile the Nvidia Driver for older hardware v340.108 for)

The i586 is able to connect to the WLAN, the x86-64, my main machine, sadly is not. I get with a bit of tweaking the WLAN chip working, but when both machines sit at the same place, the i586 sees approx 20 WLANs, while the x86-64 only sees 3 or max 4 - and obviously the one I need is excluded from the list of available WLANs.

Is it possible via LAN to share the i586 internet access with the x86-64 machine?

Best via LAN network config only without the need of installing a server, since the i586 machine is limited in all its capacities.

Do I need the LAN configuration an extra external router for it to work?

Or does a LAN cable by itself suffice (I do not have a crossed LAN cable in the needed length, I hope by configuring the LAN network it would be possible to still get the two machines to connect without router)

Look up masquerading and sharing via iptables.

1 members found this post helpful.

I see… like these, then:

https://bobcares.com/blog/iptables-nat-masquerade/
https://howtoforge.com/internet-conn...ading-on-linux
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...hat-do-they-do
https://askubuntu.com/questions/9394...ip-in-iptables

I presume it's no issue when both OS do not use the very same version of iptables.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Internet_sharing

No router necessary. I would assume the ethernet adapter in the x86_64 PC is a MDI-X device so a cross over cable is not necessary.

You will need to configure static IP address for their own private subnet for both ethernet adapters and assign the gateway address on 86_64 to the address of the i586 ethernet device.

The version of iptables does not matter.

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How do I figure out if it's a MDI-X device?
Is this listed during boot up e.g. in dmesg or /var/log/messages ?

As root, execute the command:

ethtool interface | grep MDI

Where interface is the actual interface ID i.e eth0 or whatever.

Hopefully Porteus includes the ethtool utility.

1 members found this post helpful.

currently I am on the i586 one (for obvious reasons)

and the i586 does not have MDI - but has ethtool:

You did not follow my instructions

Where interface is the actual interface ID i.e eth0 or whatever.

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sorry my bad.
that gives on the i586
and on the x86-64
Hopefully that's not an issue with the x86-64 having no MDI-X.

And since it's 02:28 I hit the sack, one embarrassing mistake like literally using
ethtool interface | grep MDI
due to lack of sleep should already be one mistake too much.

You should be alright since one PC as MDI capability.

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Indeed, even when I used a different approach. I also posted on the Porteus forum and there I got this tip:
and that works like a charm, just follow the settings (first server [the one with the WLAN], then the client [the other one]) and all is fine. Just a few steps that have to manually be edited.