how to setup linux machines on LAN.

[vshal]

i m a new linux user and was trying to connect two machines on LAN but didn't succeed. i need help on how to do it...please help.

[yourname3232]

Are you connecting them directly or throulh a router? What linux distro are you using? What is the problem? If you are connecting two computers directly to each other you will need a crossover cable between them.

[vshal]

actually i haven't tried out setting up the LAN as yet. i m new to this and just wanna some sort of guidance on how to go bout it. i m planning to connect machines running on RedHat 9.

[Roxoff]

get a cheap hub, cheap network cards and a few cheap patch cables and use them - using crossover cables is possible, but it can be messy if you end up with straight through (i.e. normal) network cables and crossover cables hanging around when you're expanding your lan later.

Assign static IP addresses to each computer, use the 192.168.1.X range, and make X different for each computer, it can be any value from 1-255, but dont use 1 or 255! Set the subnet mask to 255.255.255.0 (dont worry if you dont know what the subnet mask is, just set it to these values - you can look up it's meaning later).

Set the hostname for each computer to something unique to your lan. The way you do this can vary from distro to distro, so check your manpages/docs/distro website for info on this.

The edit the /etc/hosts file on each computer to associate the address you've given each to the hostname you've given each.

Plug both the computers into the hub, turn them both on, and (at a command prompt) see if you can 'ping' the other machine, use 'ping <hostname>' and it should give you a response. If this works, your network is up and running.

[nickdrums]

I found this very useful - can you elaborate a bit on naming the machines? I've searched high and low for how to do this on Mandriva 2006, but I think it's considered too obvious to be worthy of a how-to!

[nickdrums]

I eventually found out how to name the machine in Mandriva 2006. It's in:

Configure your computer->Network & Internet->Alter miscellaneous internet settings

Set the hostname to something which pleases you ...

[Roxoff]

I found this very useful - can you elaborate a bit on naming the machines? I've searched high and low for how to do this on Mandriva 2006, but I think it's considered too obvious to be worthy of a how-to!

I know how to do it on Fedora, the file you need to edit is /etc/sysconfig/network, there is a line in there that says HOSTNAME=..., you just set that. Although using the tool 'system-config-network' works better. I know that in the dim distant past Mandriva was taken from one of the RedHat linuxes, so this might still apply.

When selecting names, anything goes really, you should pick names that are comfortable for you to remember. You can also select a local domain name - the only tip here is making sure the top level domain is not a 'internet' style name, i.e. ending in .com or .net or .org, etc. Something like 'home.lan' would do, so you could call your machines, for example, 'fred.home.lan' and 'barney.home.lan', or something like that.