Hi All

Trying to get a local linux box to network to my main WinXP (Home) box.

WinXP box
- cable internet (used to be dial-up)
- direct wired to wireless router

Linux box
- currently has RedHat 6.2
- used to connect directly to winxp box using crossover cable, but since cable internet, winxp box can't connect to linux box

I bought Redhat 9 and have thought of trying to upgrade to see if that would help sort out the connection problem.

However, I was wondering if other linux systems, like Mandrake or Suse, are better when it comes to connecting to a local winxp box.

Any thoughts/suggestions/experiences?

Many thanks

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You're easiest bet is to just pick up a Linksys or netgear router for like $40 or $50. Your cable modem plugs into that, then you have 4 ports to connect. Box your Linux and XP box will get an internal IP number. They can share the cable modem, and talk to each other over the net via samba mount or ftp or whatever (plus your usual NFS mounts etc).

Thanks, Mark. I'm heading out to the store now

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How'd you make out?

Hi Mark

I haven't been able to get to this until now cuz the water well pump died. Still without water, though....ugh!

I picked up regular network cable and a Belkin wireless router that has 4 hard wire jacks in the back. The winxp machine is plugged into the LAN 1 port and the linux box in plugged into LAN 2 port.

When I accessed the router IP from the win machine, everything worked okay. I saw two different DHCP IPs, which were different from the router IP. So, I figured that one of the DHCP IPs was for the win box and the other DHCP IP was for the linux box.

When I typed what I thought was the linux box DHCP IP into the winxp browser, it could not connect.

Also, when I tried to access the router IP through the linux box, I got the following error:

"A network error occurred: unable to connect to server (TCP Error: Network is unreachable)
The server may be down or unreachable. Try connecting again later."

I am at a loss at this point. Even though both machines are connected to the router, the win box can't reach the lin box, and the lin box can't pull up the router IP.

Any suggestions? If I could get these two to find each other, man would this save me tons of time.

Many thanks, Mark

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Is the linux box configured so that your router is the gateway?

I'm not too good overall with networking stuff, just enough to troubleshoot and fix my own stuff ususally.

Basically, make sure your linux box is getting assigned the dhcp address the router is assigning, and that your router is listed as the gateway in Linux. That may or may not help

I used LinuxConf to enter the gateway - into the Default box, but I don't see anywhere to enter a DHCP number.

Can this be found using LinuxConf, or should I be using something else?

Thanks

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You don't need to enter in any settings for dhcp, just need to make sure to tell linux to use dhcp. This is different depending on the distribution, but you should be able to do it from linuxconf I believe.

Try typing

ifconfig

as root and see what it says (should give you the IP address you have).

Cheers,

Alex
--
Gossamer Threads Inc.

Hi Alex

Yeah, I gave that a try already......ifconfig

C:>ifconfig

but I got an error... It said it was an invalid command.

I then searched (find) for ifconfig, but no luck again

I found out that this old linux box that I have uses dos from freedos.org. Do you think that makes a difference?

I've also been hunting around in LinuxConf, but doggone if I can find the DHCP stuff. I also have WebMin. Maybe that will have something.

The hunt continues....

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Hi,

ifconfig is a linux program, not a windows one. =) Not sure where the c:\ is coming from.

Cheers,

Alex
--
Gossamer Threads Inc.

ipconfig is a Windows program (on XP). on older Windows boxen try "winipconfig". I prefer to just click on the little network tray icon, switch to the "support" tab, and click "details". not that it matters since Alex was talking about Linux anyway.

Philip
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Limecat is not pleased.

I had originally replied from another location and couldn't quite remember what I had done......

Linux box, RedHat 6.2

[root@localhost /]ifconfig
bash: ifconfig: command not found

I checked in Webmin whether dhcpd gets started at boot, and it was not. So, I set it to start and then rebooted. However, when I clicked Start dhcpd server in webmin, I got the following error:

Failed to start dhcpd:
[snip]
Can't open /etc/dhcpd.conf: No such file or directory

I looked in there, and all I could find was a /dhcpd directory, but no dhcpd.conf file. Is there some standard file that I could drop in?

Still, ifconfig cannot be found.....

I think I'll try to connect the two boxes with a sledge hammer and some chisels...yeah, that should work

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dude... I need to order new contacts. I swore I saw "ipconfig", not "ifconfig". seems the two programs are similar, though.

Philip
------------------
Limecat is not pleased.

Hi,

It is on there, just not in your path. Try

/sbin/ifconfig

and see if that works. However, it sounds like you don't have dhcp installed, so you might want to try and grab an rpm for it.

Cheers,

Alex
--
Gossamer Threads Inc.

btw, dhcpd != dhcpcd. I'm guessing you need dhcpcd for the linux machine to get an ip from your router.

Adrian

Okay, I'm giving up on that ancient machine. It's driving me crazy.

I'm now trying out a newer machine that currently has win98. The only thing is that when I boot in command line mode, the darned thing does not recognize the cdrom:

C:\>d:
Invalid drive specification

Well, if I boot windows, it sure as heck sees d:



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Try a Win98 boot disk. I had the same problem with my system when I tried to reformat it. Using a boot disk seemed to do the trick, as it loads the CD drivers from the diskette.

Hope that helps.

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

---

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I did find a win98se boot disk, and it did get me over that hurdle. Thanks, Andy. I ran into other probs. So, I decided to just buy a new hard drive and start from scratch.

I plugged in a Western 40G drive, the jumper is set to SINGLE (not cable).

I ran the redhat boot floppy disk that I made, but it would go only so far. During boot, it stopped at this point with this message:

"Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 09:02"

There were some other ominous-sounding things right before that, too.

"FAT: unable to read boot sector"

and some others.

My guess is that this occurred because the hard drive has not been formatted.

The Western drive came with its own formatting thing, but during the formatting steps, it stated that it would only do it for Windows (and maybe Mac I think). It asked for the win setup disk.

There was no info on how to do the format if installing Linux.

At this point, I'm not sure if I'm having this problem because I have to first format the hard drive or because maybe my boot disk is faulty.

If formatting first is the key, what would be the procedure, given that Western's tool only works if installing Windows or Mac?

I've been searching like a hound dog for an answer to this one.

Many thanks

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I struggled with Redhat, but then I got Mandrake Linux 9.2. The Mandrake installed great. I still can't network to my winxp box through the router, but I'm working on it

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Okay, Mandrake is running nicely.

Here is ifconfig:

eth0
Link encap: Ethernet
inet addr: 199.234.5.6
Bcast: 199.234.5.678
Mask:255.255.255.0

lo
Link encap: Local Loopback
inet addr: 127.0.0.1
Mask: 255.0.0.0

Nothing called "IP" was displayed.

The Mandrake box does access the internet through the router just fine.

I put the inet addr number into the ftp program on the winxp box to try to access the mandrake box, but it wouldn't connect

Might there be some permissions things in the mandrake box that I have to fool with?

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My guess is that the firewall is blocking the ports. I had the same problem with a generic install of RedHat a while back. This affected Samba, SSH, HTTP and FTP. Unfortunately, I don't recall exactly how I opened the ports up. I do remember spending a lot of time at http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ trying to figure it out though. Something to do with iptables if I remember correctly.

~Charlie

Hi Chaz

Thanks very much. Glad to hear you got it working.

I've been plying the waters over at http://www.linuxquestions.org, but I'll check out LinuxNewbie.org, too.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/...&threadid=118886

I wish this made more sense. I can't see any clear pathway through this.

Thanks, again

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Yep, this helped. When I now type in the IP, I get the mandrake default page, which is at /var/www/html

Anyone know where Mandrake configures the webserver? I can't seem to find linuxconf or webmin.

Still can't FTP in, though, as root or user.

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Try running

locate httpd.conf

to find the location of the config file. If there is no output, you might have to issue the command

updatedb

This will take a while, and produces an index of all your files that you can search with the locate command.

Hope this helps.

Ivan
-----
Iyengar Yoga Resources / GT Plugins

Found it:

proftpd

I had to go into the Mandrake Control Center and enable proftpd:

Configure > Configure Your Computer (Mandrake Control Center) > System > DrakXServices

Then, in there, find proftpd and start it. You can also check off whether to start it at boot.



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