How to get in through a router

[Longman, Bill]

> I'm in process of setting up a LAN -- with a lot of help from an
> electronic friend and guru. The first thing, the way we're 
> doing it, is to
> get in at all, share files, back things up, etc; then upgrade 
> machines --
> all the present FC1 ones to FC4, and maybe also the YDL4 one 
> to FC4, maybe
> not.  It would be a convenience ...
> 
> Case in point: using the dhcp table from the router, along with
> sbin/ifconfig, I can disable iptables on the FC1 machines with
> /sbin/service iptables stop, and then ssh a/o scp from one to another
> using IP numbers. (We'll set up proper machine names later, 
> after all the
> upgrades, and then make specific holes in the firewalls; this 
> is just a
> start.)
> 
> But YDL won't take /sbin/service iptables stop, even from 
> root's prompt; I
> suppose the Terrasoft people have put it somewhere else.
> 
> I tried going into Services from the Main Menu, and stopping iptables
> there; I also made sure sshd was running.
> 
> But ssh to the iBook's IP from an FC1 machine just gets an 
> error : "ssh:
> connect to host 192.168.x.y port 22: No route to host"

BT,

This means that the machine you are on has no idea how to get to that host.
This probably means you need to add a default route to your machine. You
didn't tell us the topology, so it's really hard to tell you what to do
here, chief. If they are all on the same hub, they should all have the same
IP address range if they are all set up to use DHCP. No route to host would
be a most distressing error message if they are all on the same LAN and are
all using DHCP and are all using the same default router. There would be
something very wrong here if this were the case.

In any event, this means that the FC1 machine has an IP address that is
outside the iBook's IP network.

You need to use the "route" command to show the current routes on both
machines. You also need to use the "ifconfig" command to show the interface
settings on both machines. That's the first step, I'd say.

Bill