On Sunday 14 April 2002 07:13 am, Robert C. Paulsen Jr. wrote:
On Sun, Apr 14, 2002 at 04:54:17PM +0700, Constant Brouerius van Nidek wrote:
Having tried to get an idea about the working of a home network from the howto's man pages and the SuSe manual I am at a point that I am looking for a more popular an hands on description what can be done and how with a home network. My home network exists of two computers, one with SuSe 7.3 and the other with Slackware 3.5, connected via a Rj45 crossover cable. The network is setup, the computers are connected but that is it for now.
My network experience is based on DOS, a laplink cable and programs such as norton in order to link computers. In DOS I can look into the other computer, get files and copy files from the second computer. But with Linux? Does somebody has the URL of a popular description of networking ?
Some pointers/hints, etc...
1. In the long run you will want to use either a hub (cheaper) or a switch (more expensive but faster once you have more that a couple of computers). For now the cross-over is good enough.
2. Look into the telnet command to learn how to log on to one computer using the other's keyboard and display. You may also need to enable this capability by uncommenting the telnet line in /etc/inetd.conf. I *think* this may already be done for you by default but don't remember for sure. If you need to do this yourself, see the comment at the top of the file on how to restart inetd to make the change take effect.
3. Look into the ftp command to learn how to copy files from one computer to the other. Again, there is an "ftp" line in /etc/inetd.conf that may need to be uncommented.
4. Look into NFS to learn how to make a directory on one computer show up as a directory on the other. One system needs to "nfs share" a directory (see /etc/exports and the exportfs command). The system you are typing at needs to mount the shared directory to a local mount point. See /etc/fstab and the mount command. The filesystem type is nfs.
5. If one of your computers runs DOS/Windows, forget 2, 3 and 4 above and look into Samba. This allows your Linux machine to share files and printers just like Windows. This requires some complex setup which can be made a little easier using the Swat program. Swat allows you to open up web page (http://localhost:901) which allows you to configure Samba by filling in fields and making selections on the web page. It has links to pretty good help for everything. Still, fairly complicated. The web page will ask for id (root) and password.
Constant, In addition to what Robert mentioned, you might want to also look into remote X sessions, which let you run applications on one machine, but have the display on the computer that is in front of you. Also, you might play around with an application called ckermit. It is very simple to set up and use, makes logging into another computer via telnet/ssh trivially simple, allows you to send and receive files, and has support for scripting. It is a great app that is used a lot in my house, where there are five computers, all running some version of SuSE. Another app that you might try is vnc, which ought to be on your SuSE cd's somewhere. If not, you can get it here: http:www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/ If you add more computers to your network, definitely go with a switch to connect them together. The cost is not that much more than a hub, but there is a definite speed advantage to using the switch. And as you add more computers, you should read up on packet filtering, and using the squid proxy. HTH, Kevin -- If it weren't for geometry, life would be pointless.