[Coco] Linux<->Windows Ethernet connection

[Frank Pittel]

On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 12:54:21PM -0600, Roger Taylor wrote:
> At 03:14 AM 3/27/2006, you wrote:
> 
> >Until you get the networking setup nothing network based like smb is going 
> >to
> >work. Alas although I use Redhat versions of Linux They've made network 
> >configuration
> >a bit of a pain when compared to Solaris. :-( The best way to start is with
> >their ever changing gui. Look in the predefined menus under system or 
> >system
> >setup, etc for a tool called "network" or something like it. What you're 
> >looking
> >for is a tool that will let you set the IP address, netmask, etc. You'll 
> >want
> >to do the same for windows. (with a different IP address of course) When 
> >you
> >get the network configuration on both servers setup make sure that you can
> >ping the linux machine from windows and the windows machine from linux.
> 
> 
> Ok, in my Network Configuration dialog I see tabs for Devices, Hardware, 
> DNS, and Hosts.  Under Devices, it lists one entry "Inactive - eth0 - eth0 
> - Ethernet".  Under Hardware it lists one entry "DEC 21*40 and clones", 
> Ethernet, eth0".  Under DNS I chose "laptop" for my Hostname, and it shows 
> 192.168.0.1 for the primary DNS.  Under the Hosts tab it has one entry 
> "127.0.0.1, localhost.localdomain, localhost".
> 
> When I try to activate my device, it waits a minute and always fails, 
> "activating network device eth0, please wait..." with the error msg "cannot 
> activate network device eth0... failed.", and "Determining IP information 
> for eth0... failed."
> 
> What gives?  Is my 100/10 card not compatible?  It's the common one sold at 
> Wally-World and it works great between two of my XP machines.

If the card wasn't compatable it wouldn't have been detected. Since I don't
currently have machines with RH9 installed the gui that I'm looking for may
be different from yours. You may need to use a little imagination to translate
what I'm seeing into what you're seeing. Since you're not attached to the internet
the DNS server setting isn't important.

To setup eth0 with the gui I have on fedora-4 I highlight the entry for eth0 and
interrupt<SP?> on an option to edit the entry. This should bring up a window that
allows you to configure the interface. Check the box to activate the device, then
select the box to statically set the IP address. Enter an IP address for the linux
box. I would suggest that you choose something in the 192.168. range. Select a
netmask of 255.255.255.0. Now for the complicated part. The settings on the windows
machine need to have the same settings for the first three octets of the IP that
you select for the linux machine. If for example you choose 192.168.73.5 (a purely
random number that would work and not a suggestion) then the IP address on the windows
machine must start with 192.168.73 and should have a netmask of 255.255.255.0.
Since your only connecting two machines you can leave the gateway setting blank.
>From there you want to activate the interface.

Now bring up an xterm and as root execute "ifconfig eth0". The result should be similar to
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:13:D4:99:A6:B3
          inet addr:192.168.63.10  Bcast:192.168.63.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::213:d4ff:fe99:a6b3/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:3438818 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:3628398 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:4191131925 (3.9 GiB)  TX bytes:4266126677 (3.9 GiB)
          Interrupt:50 Memory:d5004000-0

For now you only need to be concerned with the firs couple of lines. the "inet
address" should be set to the IP address. If that's correct try pinging the ip
address of the windows machine. You should get a reply. :-)



> Samba is installed and I used "/etc/rc.d/init.d/smb start" to get it 
> running which reported [OK].

Since samba works over the network and until you get the network between the
two machines working samba won't do you any good.

Frank