Sigh. Once they believe you know everything, they stop telling you anything.

I adore Craigslist. It got me my apt. this summer.

Mac OSX question I'm having touble defining correctly for a google or apple search.

In OSX, you can turn on "internet connection sharing." Then you hook up other Macs and PC's to the Mac or to a hub connected to the Mac.

Fine and dandy if you want to use DHCP internally. I want to use static IP addresses on the internal network.

Most articles I find tall jme how to connect the *External* network with a static IP, and again assume I will be using DHCP interneally.

I want to do this on 10.3, but I can't find any settings for such an action without going for a third-party solution.

Basically, it's a matter of me already having a stable network with static ips, and I want to be able to boot into OSX and have the same stable shared network on the master machine.

Any help would be appreciated.

I'm assuming you're only getting one real IP from your ISP, so by "static IP" you just mean static internal IPs? Like, your laptop will always be 192.168.1.11 on the internal network, even though your external, "real" IP for your network is 10.1.11.178 or whatever?

What if you turn on internet connection sharing on your main Mac, then use the "DHCP with manual address" option on your secondary computers, making sure to specify a valid IP in the subnet that internet connection sharing uses? That is, if using DHCP on your secondary computer gives you the IP 192.168.1.12 or whatever, you could probably put on DHCP with manual address using the IP 192.168.1.100 if you want, and it would probably work. From then on, that computer would be 192.168.1.100. I'm not sure if a similar option is available on PCs, unfortunately - I haven't used one in years.

If you were using a router instead of a master Mac, you could just tell it to run a DHCP server but always assign certain IPs to certain MAC addresses. I'm not sure if such a thing is possible using the Mac instead, but the above solution might work.

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I'm assuming you're only getting one real IP from your ISP, so by "static IP" you just mean static internal IPs? Like, your laptop will always be 192.168.1.11 on the internal network, even though your external, "real" IP for your network is 10.1.11.178 or whatever?

Right

What if you turn on internet connection sharing on your main Mac, then use the "DHCP with manual address" option on your secondary computers, making sure to specify a valid IP in the subnet that internet connection sharing uses? That is, if using DHCP on your secondary computer gives you the IP 192.168.1.12 or whatever, you could probably put on DHCP with manual address using the IP 192.168.1.100 if you want, and it would probably work. From then on, that computer would be 192.168.1.100. I'm not sure if a similar option is available on PCs, unfortunately - I haven't used one in years.

My computers are set up for 192.168.15.2 through 192.168.15.255 as possibles right now. I have a mix of machines I can put online to troubleshoot friend's computers. Currently I have a Windows XP, two Windows 98 machines and two old OS9 macs.

If you were using a router instead of a master Mac, you could just tell it to run a DHCP server but always assign certain IPs to certain MAC addresses.

If wishes were fishes... I can't afford anything right now.

I'm not sure if such a thing is possible using the Mac instead, but the above solution might work.

Actually I have all the information you've written here, but the problem seems to be that on the OSX machine I'm simply not finding where I can tell it the range to use for the DHCP internal to the home network.

The main crux of the problem is that I have something that works in OS9, and I want to transition into OSX and back with a simple reboot without having to change every machine I have working or idle...

If wishes were fishes... I can't afford anything right now.

I think I have a spare Linksys router sitting around here. I'll toss it in the box with the Mac stuff?

Sure, I might as well.

I'll have to think about how I'll re-do the wiring.

I have 5 machines on My 32 port 10/100 switch. Kind of overkill, I know, but I was hoping to have my whole house hardwired by now. A port or two in every room.

Luckily I don't have them all on at once. Well, not very often.

I'll still keep working on this, because that's how I learn things. Sheer effort sometimes.

NAT or "Network Address translation" seems to be a better keyword than "IP Sharing" or "Iinternet connection sharing" when I'm looking at this problem. I wish I could set my own span of addresses for the DHCP in ICS.

Hmm. After doing a fair amount of research, messing around with NetInfo manager, et cetera, I'm forced to come to the conclusion that the subnet "192.168.2.*" is hardwired into OS X's internet sharing, and only IPs in that subnet will work. There are much more difficult ways to enable different subnets: see the mac os x hint here, if you are really desperate to use only the 192.168.15.* subnet, but I can't find that such a capability is available without doing it manually as in that hint.

My detective work: turning on InternetSharing starts three process, apparently: bootpd, natd, and named. I figured out that bootpd was the DHCP server, read its manpage, and figured out which NetInfo things it read, including what subnet it offers to the world. Opened up Netinfo manager (with Internet Sharing off) and saw that those NetInfo keys were blank. Turned Internet Sharing on and suddenly they weren't blank anymore, there was a 192.168.2.* subnet configured, and it said com.apple.nat started it up.

Unfortunately, com.apple.nat.plist contains no information about the IP range, being simply a list of on-off prefs that mean sharing is turned on.

A recursive grep for "192.168.2" in /usr, /etc, /Library, and /var failed to turn up anything useful, which means that this almost certainly isn't something you can easily set in a preference somewhere, unfortunately.

Sorry, Daniel. I don't think this is doable. I think the "192.168.2" subnet is compiled into the binary that sets up the internet sharing.

Why is the use of 192.168.15.* so important to you, just out of curiosity? Why not just move them all to 192.168.2.*? They'll still be static, just a slightly different static...