Baslinux mailing list

["James Miller (office)" <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

Hmmm.  This sounds like an interesting project.  I have some snippets of
networking knowledge that might help, but it's going to take more than my
input to solve it (or maybe several days of my puzzling/input - which I'm
not really in a position to give :( ).  Anyway, I think what you're doing
is called peer-to-peer networking - hooking 2 machines together directly
without an intermediary networking device like a hub/switch/router.  I
don't know much about how Win assigns IP address to the NIC: maybe that's
one issue you could clarify.  Do you use some software to network your 2
Win98 machines?  Native Win stuff (i.e., DCC?)?  Any idea how it works,
i.e., how it decides what address to assign to the NIC?

For Linux computers to access filesystems on other machines hooked to the
network, nfs (network file system) is usually used.  I think this is a
client/server thing: the machine whose filesystem is being accessed needs
to be running nfs in server mode, while the machine doing the accessing
needs to be running only the nfs client.  BL has nfs enabled, but only in
client mode.  How you would get Win to make its filesystem accessible via
a network connection is sort of beyond my realm of knowledge.  But I'd
like to know more about it.  To access the BL filesystem from your Win
machine, you'd need to have it run nfs in server mode (sorry if my
terminology is off here - I'm a bit sketchy on details) for one thing.
For another thing you'd need to run samba on the BL machine: this piece of
software makes a Linux machine's filesystem do things Win can understand,
so that Win can read and apparently use it.  I've never gotten samba
running (only made some half-hearted efforts), so I can't clarify much
beyond those remarks.

On Tue, 30 Sep 2003, Sheldon Isaac wrote:
>
> Below is the output of (I think)  ifconfig -a  on the AMD under BL.
> Also part of the  netsetup  file
> Also the bottom of the output from  dmesg
>
> ============
> dummy     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
>           BROADCAST NOARP  MTU:1500  Metric:1
>           RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
>           TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
>           collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
>           RX bytes:0 (0.0 iB)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 iB)
>
> eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:10:5A:26:1D:B5
>           BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
>           RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
>           TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
>           collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
>           RX bytes:0 (0.0 iB)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 iB)
>           Interrupt:11 Base address:0xe800
>
> lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
>           inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
>           UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:3924  Metric:1
>           RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
>           TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
>           collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
>           RX bytes:0 (0.0 iB)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 iB)>
> ------------------
eth0 has no network address assigned, it seems.  Did you do ifconfig -a
*before* you ran netsetup?  I hope so.  Otherwise, we'll have to figure
out why your NIC isn't getting assigned a network address.  I don't think
it will be possible to communicate via the NIC - certainly not with Linux,
but maybe also under Win - without a network address assigned to the NIC.
What in the world is "dummy," btw?

> This is the part of the netsetup file that's not all commented out:
>
> <snip>
> #------- ETHERNET  (using 3com network card) ---------------
> insmod 3c59x
> # dhcp                       ##  if DHCP server is on network
> ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.1  ##  if no DHCP server is on network
>
You're telling your NIC to be assigned the address 192.168.1.1 when you
run netsetup - which is why I think the ifconfig -a output above was done
before you ran netsetup.  Please clarify whether your NIC gets assigned an
IP address after you run netsetup.  Depending on how Win communicates with
other peers, you may or may not need dhcp: I kind of think you won't,
since dhcp seems to assume a client/server setup and what you're doing is
more like peer-to-peer.  But that's a bit of speculation on my part:
unfortunately, I have no experience that relates to resolving the issue.
You *can* communicate via hostname (e.g., "AMD300") under Linux and Win,
but I think this presumes that hostnames can be resolved to IP addresses:
this is usually done by some sort of server on the network, or in a file
(on BL I think it's called "hosts" and is in the /etc dir) on the
local machine.  Sort of 6 of 1 half dozen of another: I can remember
network addresses (for small networks, anyway) just as easily as
host names, but host names can be alot easier to enter at the command
line - which could tip things in favor of using them.  But where (if?)
host names are connected to IP addresses locally on a Win machine I do not
know.

> --------------
> This is from  dmesg:
> Linux version 2.2.16 (root@bigkitty) (gcc version egcs-2.91.66
> 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)) #22 Fri Jun 16 16:51:24 PDT 2000
>
I detest computers named after cats.  Just kidding :)
>
> Partition check:
>  hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4
> VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
> Freeing unused kernel memory: 60k freed
> Adding Swap: 96604k swap-space (priority -1)
> 3c59x.c:v0.99H 27May00 Donald Becker
> http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html
> eth0: 3Com 3c905B Cyclone 100baseTx at 0xe800,  00:10:5a:26:1d:b5, IRQ 11
>   8K byte-wide RAM 5:3 Rx:Tx split, autoselect/Autonegotiate interface.
>   MII transceiver found at address 24, status 786d.
>   MII transceiver found at address 0, status 786d.
>   Enabling bus-master transmits and whole-frame receives.
>
So, it looks like your NIC checks out fine.  We just need to figure out
why it has no IP address assigned to it in the ifconfig -a output.  Did
you run ifconfig -a *before* you ran netsetup?  This seems like the most
fundamental issue to resolve before proceeding, since I think any network
communication will be impossible without an IP address assigned to your
NIC.

James