[ale] Networking Linuxboxes

[JK]

Paul Cartwright wrote:
> On Tue May 27 2008, Marc Ferguson wrote:
>> My wife, finally installed linux on her machine this weekend - happy day!
>> She's running openSUSE 10.3 and I'm running Fedora 8.  I thought they would
>> automatically see each other, but it looks like there is more to it than I
>> originally thought.  Right now it's a simple peer-to-peer network, I don't
>> know if we'll should do a client-server structure, but I'll listen to any
>> suggestions.  Thanks.
> 
> not sure what you want to do between the 2 machines?
> do you have both IP/hostnames in each /etc/host ??
> can you ping each machine from the other?
> can you telnet/ftp between machines? Other than swapping files on a USB stick, 
> what is it you can't do and want to do?


I think all the responses so far have been at an inappropriate
level of abstraction :-)

I think what Marc is expecting is that, like Windows, multiple
Linux machines on the same physical network will automagically
see each other's shared resources, and provide some reasonably
obvious means of indicating that a resource should be shared.
But we are talking about command-line tools that we are not
entitled to assume he's familiar with (although in fact he may
be).  This is, IMO, one form of passive hostility to newbies:
when we assume they know something we know (and most especially
when we "assume" that, while secretly suspecting in our heart
of hearts that they *don't*), it makes it hard for them even
to ask intelligent questions, or to get answers that make sense.

So, Marc:  how familiar are you with Unix in general, and
with working with the command line? Are you friends with
IP addresses and utilities for working with them, such
as ping and ifconfig?

10000-foot overview:

First you have to ensure that your machines have valid
network addresses and can physically communicate over
the network.  This will require you to open a shell,
probably as user "root" (although maybe youre distro
provides other means of getting the necessary security
privileges); and then to check and/or configure your
IP addresses using "ifconfig" [1]; and to verify
a basic level of communication using "ping". Once that's
done, we can proceed to higher-level issues such
as file- or printer-sharing.

Sorry if that sounded patronizing.  It can be a fine
line to walk.

[1] Or possibly by using some distro-specific tool
or config file that sits atop ifconfig.  (There's
a big rant packaged up in that sentence, but I won't
go into it at the moment.)

Cheers,

-- JK


-- 
I do not particularly want to go where the money is -
  it usually does not smell nice there. -- A. Stepanov