Sharing the Pi's WiFi connection through the Ethernet port

Question

I have a pi running the latest release of raspbian and it's connected to the Internet using a wireless USB dongle. What I would like to do, is to share the pi's wifi connection so that any computer connected to the pi using a LAN cable would be able to receive the Internet. I had a look around the Internet but I can't seem to find anything of relevance. I'm familiar with this process on Windows and Mac OS X, but doing this on the pi has just got me stumped.

EDIT: I don't know whether this helps anyone but I am connected to the Internet on my pi via wlan0, but I would like to share that Internet connection via eth0.

Answer 1

For Raspbian Jessie

From this document:

We will use dnsmasq package for this purpose because it is combined DHCP and DNS server and also easy to configure.

If you want something a little more 'heavyweight', you can use the isc-dhcp-server and bind9 packages for DHCP and DNS respectively, but for our purposes, dnsmasq works just fine.

sudo apt-get install dnsmasq

We need to configure interfaces. We will assign a static IP address to eth0 which will be used as gateway. Open the interfaces file

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

Edit the eth0 section like this:

allow-hotplug eth0  
iface eth0 inet static  
    address 192.168.2.1
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    network 192.168.2.0
    broadcast 192.168.2.255

Next, we will configure dnsmasq. The shipped dnsmasq config file contains a lot of information on how to use it. So, I will advise to move it and create a new one.

sudo mv /etc/dnsmasq.conf /etc/dnsmasq.conf.orig  
sudo nano /etc/dnsmasq.conf

Paste the following into the new file

interface=eth0      # Use interface eth0  
listen-address=192.168.2.1 # listen on  
# Bind to the interface to make sure we aren't sending things 
# elsewhere  
bind-interfaces
server=8.8.8.8       # Forward DNS requests to Google DNS  
domain-needed        # Don't forward short names  
# Never forward addresses in the non-routed address spaces.
bogus-priv
# Assign IP addresses between 192.168.2.2 and 192.168.2.100 with a
# 12 hour lease time
dhcp-range=192.168.2.2,192.168.2.100,12h 

Edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file to enable packet forwarding

sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf

Remove the # from the beginning of the line containing net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 This will enable packet forwarding on next reboot. But if you want to try it right now without reboot then do this.

sudo sh -c "echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward"

We also need to share RPi’s internet connection with the devices connected over Wi-Fi. We will configure a NAT between eth0 and wlan0:

sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o wlan0 -j MASQUERADE  
sudo iptables -A FORWARD -i wlan0 -o eth0 -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT  
sudo iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o wlan0 -j ACCEPT  

However, we need these rules to be applied every time we reboot the Pi, so run sudo sh -c "iptables-save > /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat" to save the rules to the file /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat. Now we need to run this after each reboot, so open the /etc/rc.local file with sudo nano /etc/rc.local and just above the line exit 0, add the following line:

iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat  

And that’s all! Now just Reboot your RPi and you will be able to access Internet

sudo reboot

Updated for Raspbian Stretch

Above configuration won't work in newer version of Raspbian. So, I have created a script for this which make it possible in less pain.

Connect to WiFi network using this guide.

Download the script from here. Place it at /home/pi/

Open up /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart file

sudo nano /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

Add the last line :

@lxpanel --profile LXDE-pi
@pcmanfm --desktop --profile LXDE-pi
@xscreensaver -no-splash
@point-rpi
sudo bash /home/pi/wifi-to-eth-route.sh

Make sure you have given full path to the file. And you're done. Now reboot to see the changes

sudo reboot

Answer 2

Being your purpose provide internet access to your LAN devices, will assume double 'NAT' will not be a big issue.
With this configuration you will provide wireless access to non WiFi devices that will benefit from internet access.

Prerequisite

Make sure your Wi-Fi is properly configured and working. if something goes bad your access to the device through `eth0` will be limited or inexistent.

Setup

We need a couple of packages to start:

apt-get update
apt-get install network-manager isc-dhcp-server

Interfaces

edit the file `/etc/network/interfaces` to match the following, this will set your eth0 a fix ip address (10.10.10.1) and will recreate `resolv.conf`.

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

iface default inet dhcp

allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet static
  address 10.10.10.1
  network 10.10.10.0
  netmask 255.255.255.0
  broadcast 10.10.10.255
  gateway 10.10.10.1

auto wlan0
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
  wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
  up cat /etc/resolv.conf | sed 's/ver /ver 127.0.0.1,/g' > /etc/resolv_local.conf
  up cat /etc/resolv.conf | sed 's/ver /ver 127.0.0.1,/g' > /etc/resolv.conf

DHCP

Modify default `dhcp` configuration to make it authoritative and add the LAN network (10.10.10.*), edit the file `/etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf`, add the following content:

# configuration for the bridge internal subnet.
subnet 10.10.10.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
  range 10.10.10.101 10.10.10.119;
  option domain-name-servers 8.8.8.8;
  option domain-name "domain.local";
  option routers 10.10.10.1;
  default-lease-time 600;
  max-lease-time 7200;
}

IPTABLES

Now create the following script to setup and start the network on every reboot. The script will dynamically create a few 'IPTABLES' rules. Name it `/root/bridge.sh`:

#!/bin/bash
LOCAL_IFACE=eth0
INET_IFACE=wlan0

# this is where the dhcp info comes in. We need the default gateway
# /var/lib/dhcp/dhclient.wlan0.leases
f=/var/lib/dhcp/dhclient.$INET_IFACE.leases
GATEWAY=$(cat $f| grep "option route" | tail -1 |awk '{print $3}'| sed 's/;//')

IPT=$(which iptables)
# get the wlan address
INET_ADDRESS=$(ifconfig $INET_IFACE |grep "inet addr" |awk '{print $2}' |awk -F$

# Flush the tables
$IPT -F INPUT
$IPT -F OUTPUT
$IPT -F FORWARD
$IPT -t nat -F

$IPT -t nat -P PREROUTING ACCEPT
$IPT -t nat -P POSTROUTING ACCEPT
$IPT -t nat -P OUTPUT ACCEPT

# Allow forwarding packets:
$IPT -A FORWARD -p ALL -i $LOCAL_IFACE -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A FORWARD -i $INET_IFACE -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

# Packet masquerading
$IPT -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $INET_IFACE  -j SNAT --to-source $INET_ADDRESS
$IPT -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $LOCAL_IFACE -j MASQUERADE

# save the created tables 
iptables-save > /etc/network/iptables

#cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
# make sure we are forwarding packets
echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
sysctl --system > /dev/nul

#remove the default route, usually on eth0 interface
route del default
#ifdown $INET_IFACE  && ifup $INET_IFACE
#ensure is $INET_IFACE now...
route add default gw $GATEWAY $INET_IFACE
gw=$(route -n -A inet | grep '^0.0.0.0' |awk '{ print $2 }')
echo "default route is now " $gw

Finally

Finally, you need to run the script on each reboot, add the following two lines before the `exit 0` on the file `/etc/rc.local' to run the script created before.

# will run the bridge on startup
sudo ./root/bridge.sh

Now, just restart your device and the bridge will be working for you.

pd: sudo was omitted for brevity. Use sudo -iE to have a session as root