Maybe I need to be a little clearer on my first objective which is to network two seperate machines. Network to me means that if I am at machine #1 I will be able to "see" and use a file eg jpeg, txt etc from machine #2 and vice versa Having read an article in NZ PC which showed it to be a simple task with minimal settings to alter I thought I would attempt it. This is what I know The cable is a crossover cable and a light shines at each computer at the point of entry, this inicates to me that there is at least a hard connection between the machines. After swithing off the firewalls I used a gui called network services/hostnames to configure the address's The host? names are #1 itchy ip address 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 #2 scratchy ip 192.168.0.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 Then I used a gui called network devices/network card to turn off dchp and recheck the host configurations. The machines now use there respective names so john(a)itchy is my user name for one and john(a)scratchy for the other. Root comes back as itchy:/home/john ping is giving ping scratchy ping: unknown host scratchy ping 192.168.0.2 PING 192.168.0.2 (192.168.02) 56(84)bytes of data.
From 192.168.0.1: icm_seq=2 Destination host unreachable
Change machines. ping itchy unknown host itchy ping 192.168.0.1 connect: network is unreachable The reason I was twittering on about work group is that after all the changes, I went back to the desk top and tried to open my "network" from one of the icons. It returned the "cannot find a workgroup" and I did not find a "put_the_workgroup_here" any where I looked Hope this is a little easier to follow. Do you think that I should kill that Wiki entry as it does look pretty awful in the daylight. <ping>Bruce I am in Wanganui but will be back before the next wlug meet. Regards John