MNF Configuration SNAFU

[Windependent]

I’m new to the board and this is my first post. I have a problem with setup of the Mandrake MNF and I’m hoping that someone here can provide some insight.

 

After too many years of being held hostage by MSFT, I’ve made the decision to learn Linux. I’ve started off running Mandrake 9.2 on a 2 PC test platform. I’ve spent a solid week with the new OS, and using the RTFM approach I’ve succeeded in configuring both NFS and SMB to enable cross-platform networking between the Linux boxes and a Windows SMB network on a tiny fast-ethernet LAN in my home. The next logical step seems to be establishing a good firewall before the LAN is connected to the outside world via DSL.

 

Instead of going with a low-end solution like one of the low-cost black-box broadband routers that won’t support stateful packet routing and VPN tunneling, I’ve opted to go for a more configurable PC-based firewall.

 

As an experiment, I’ve successfully downloaded and installed the Mandrake MNF on a Pentium-class machine that will act as a firewall, serve DHCP, perform NAT, etc. MNF seems to have installed properly – although the installation program used a GUI-based interface, the MNF software boots to a console (no GUI). I’m assuming that this is normal, and that the MNF normally boots to console to avoid the overhead associated with a GUI. Please correct me if I’m wrong on this.

 

Upon completion of the installation you’re invited to configure MNF. To do this you’re supposed to open a browser on one of the local machines behind the firewall and enter the following firewall’s URL: "https:/localhost.localdomain:8443/”. This loads an HTML-based configuration page that is used to configure the MNF.

 

When loading the configuration page, I was rejected during authentication when attempting to log-on using the root user-ID, and my personal user-ID that was set-up with SU capability. (Thinking about the desirability of gaining root status via a net connection, this seems to be a good idea). I was successful in logging on using the “Admin” user-ID, and proceeded to configure the MNF without any problems. Upon initial testing, the firewall appears to be working, along with the DHCP server, Squid transparent proxy, etc.

 

So here’s the problem: I’ve decided that I probably won’t need Squid, so I want to re-configure the MNF. Unfortunately I can’t change/update the configuration of the MNF. When I attempt to re-load the HTML-based configuration page, authentication fails and I get kicked out.

 

I’ve tried logging on using the Admin username and password, and instead of being authenticated, I receive the following error on the HTML page: “No Session Found : Cookies Not Found.”

 

Session cookies are indeed enabled on the Mandrake 9.2 client with the same default settings that were initially used to configure the MNF: cookies enabled, session cookies enabled, force all cookies to session cookies disabled. Examination of the cookie list on my client PC from within KDE shows that there is indeed a cookie file from the server. Deleting and/or restoring the cookie doesn’t help. Interestingly, when I attempt to log onto the MNF from any of the Windows based PCs which have cookies enabled, I get the same results: “No session found : no cookies found.”

 

If anyone has any recommendations or insights about this problem, I’d greatly appreciate your help. Unfortunately, with the download edition of MNF the documentation is not included, making the RTFM approach somewhat problematic. I’ve exhausted all of the HOWTO’s I could find, and I’m hoping that someone here may have an idea.

 

Thanks for your time.

 

Bob

 

(Sorry for the double post)