Linux vs LAN/WAN

You are going to be convinced I am smokin crack.

I threw Mandrake on an old PC to run as a server. Current topology is LinkSys (of course) router (acting as a gateway), one WinXP PC, one Mandrake server (soon to be two).

When I had the router set as DHCP everything ran snarky. But since I was going to work on the second server today, figured it was time to switch it all over to static.

Obviously, the WinXP went slick as goose-**** (as mum used to say). Converted the Mandrake to static and have had nothing but problems ever since. Can't connect to the LAN or WAN. If I configure the LAN (set IP, subnet mask, static, start on boot) it says it connects and the connection is live. But can't reach in and it can't reach out.

If I click "Configure Internet Access" or "Connect" it dumps my LAN settings (which tells me something is really wrong).

Can someone who has gotten a static Linux box operating behind a router drop a girl some help? Cheers!

You know there is something grand about working with computers. You have some experience with something (eg hooking a pc into a network). You follow the path you know you should take and expect everything to work no probs. Only there is. So you try again and again and again. Doing the same thing over and over, knowing that it should work.

You give up in disgust, go catch a break, grab a workout, snag a beer. You go back and do it one last time screaming the entire while "work, damn you, work!"

And it does.

Isn't technology grand?

Think I had this issue a couple years ago on mandrake 8.1
believe I used the ifconfig command to put the statics in.
do a "man ifconfig" to read how to do this.