On Sat, 2004-10-09 at 23:52 +1300, jaytee(a)clear.net.nz wrote:
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.
OK, so we need to: 1. Get a physical connection. This allows the next steps! :) 2. Get IP addressing and name resolution working. This is "the networking", and allows the boxes to speak to each other. 3. Set up samba. This is a network service that allows you to share files over the established link. We could use nfs, or a variety of other mechanisms, but samba is the "easiest" due to the number of people who need to talk to windows boxes.
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.
Yep. That means there is a physical link. I have seen machines get a link light, and still not be able to communicate however. Have you tested this cable elsewhere to confirm it's ok? I'd hate for us all to start down this long path only to find that the cable never worked! :)
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
OK. That sounds fine, but I don't know what that gui does. From a root command prompt, can you paste the output of the ifconfig command? ie. Here's a partial output of mine showing my wireless interface (ath0). baldir ~ # ifconfig ath0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:05:4E:43:EC:CA inet addr:10.66.6.209 Bcast:10.66.6.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::205:4eff:fe43:ecca/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:105825 errors:2030 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:2030 TX packets:108937 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:199 RX bytes:72935721 (69.5 MiB) TX bytes:18845556 (17.9 MiB) Interrupt:11 Memory:f0b44000-f0b54000 We're going to do a few of these, so you might want to paste them in a separate text file, and attach that to your reply.
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.
OK. Sounds good so far.
Root comes back as itchy:/home/john
I don't understand what you mean by "root comes back as"? "Root" in *nix simply means "the top of the heirarchy". When referring to the filesystem, root is /, when referring to users, root is the root (super) user.
ping is giving ping scratchy ping: unknown host scratchy
OK. That just means name resolution isn't working. Setting up a DNS server is probably overkill, so all you need to do is make sure that your hosts file (/etc/hosts) looks like this: 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost 192.168.0.1 itchy.example.com itchy 192.168.0.2 scratchy.example.com scratchy Assuming those are the only machines on your network, the /etc/hosts file should be the same on both machines. Now, you should be able to ping scratchy, and at least have it try... I suspect your problems run deeper though...
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
OK, itchy is telling you that it can't see scratchy. Lets start with the basics. Can itchy and scratchy ping themselves? After the previous step, they should both be able to ping themselves by name, or by IP Address. On each machine, do: ping -c3 nameofmachine (ie itchy on itchy) ping addressofmachine (ie 192.168.0.1 on itchy) route -n Paste the results into your textfile. I ask for the routing info just for completeness - if your interfaces are up and on the same subnet, routing should have been configured correctly, and there should be no problems. It's a complex topic though, and we don't want to get into that if we don't have to! :) I can just imagine Perry dying to explain a subnet mask...
Change machines. ping itchy unknown host itchy ping 192.168.0.1 connect: network is unreachable
OK. I have to confess, I read this first, and realised what the problem was. But I thought it will be a good exercise to go through the troubleshooting steps. This implies that the networking on scratchy is either unconfigured, or not started. This could be for a variety of reasons; you might have done everything correctly "from the gui", never noticing that your network card was not actually supported. Maybe you just forgot to bring the interface up at the end of the process. Maybe it doesn't go! :) Repeat the "ifconfig" step from above, and paste that into your textfile.
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.
OK, so when all the above is working correctly, this will still be the case. You won't be able to "browse" yet, as that involves setting up samba, which I don't think you've done. I think if we can get to "the machines can ping each other by name" that you deserve a break and a chocolate fish! ;) We'll tackle it later.
Do you think that I should kill that Wiki entry as it does look pretty awful in the daylight.
Its' ok - we have WikiGnomes who tend to that sort of thing - thanks Craig, Aristotle, Stuart, and Perry. Are there any lurking Gnomes? :) Right. Engage debug mode, and get back to me... Regards, Greig.