Firestarter and DHCP on Mandrake

Mandrake Control Center contains a module that sets up internet connection sharing using DHCP. However, it does so using the Shorewall firewall package and by making the machine that is sharing the internect connection a DNS server

Many users may prefer as I do, to use the more user friendly firestarter for a firewall and to use the DNS servers specified by their ISP rather than create a DNS server on their machine. To set this up is fairly easy.

First of all in Mandrake Control Center set up the Internet Connection Sharing using DrakGW under Network and Internet. You will be asked which network device to share and what device to share it with, but otherwise it should be fairly straightforward.

Mandrake will install several packages including Shorewall and BIND. The next step is to un-install these. To do this go to the Software Un-Installer in Mandrake Control Center, find them using the search function and un-install.

Once you have done this, you can install Firestarter. A Mandrake RPM can be found on all good Contrib mirrors. The installation questoins are similar to the Mandrake Connection Sharing questions. You will need to give the same answers, making sure you specify your sharing device for NAT.

You will probably want Firestarter to start as a service when you boot up. To do this it is a good idea to make sure that the Internet Connection is started at boot before the firewall. The easiest way to do this is to run SysV-Init. It is in the kdeadmin package and is found in the Configuration\Boot and Init menu. Make sure that the firestarter service is started afer the internet connection service.

The final step is to change one line in /etc/dhcpd.conf. You need to change the name servers line so that the name servers provided by your isp are used. It should look something similar to this:

option domain-name-servers 1.1.1.1,2.2.2.2

where 1.1.1.1 and 2.2.2.2 are replaced by the name servers for your ISP. The last thing you need to do is restart the dhcp service by typing the following as root:

# /etc/init.d/dhcpd restart

Hopefully now everything should be working, well it worked for me. If you suffer any problems or have an idea to make this page more helpful then please send me an e-mail.