simple connections between my boxes ?

I am more of a programmer and not up on the admin stuff. I have a new
laptop running windows. I have a couple of pretty old PCs. I installed
knoppix on one, and vector linux on the other. I only have one monitor,
so at the moment I am plying with vector linux. I'm starting to get the
idea I need ftp or telnet servers to ftp/telnet between these machines
? I have a netgear wireless router connected to my cable modem. The old
pc w/linux is pluged directly into the router, the laptop is on the
wireless. When I do ping on the laptop or ifconfig on the desktop, I
see one has like an ipc of 192.168.1.2, the other is like 192.168.1.3.
I can't seem to telnet or ftp between them, ping doesn't work either.

On 25 Oct 2006 10:52:48 -0700, surf wrote:
>
> I am more of a programmer and not up on the admin stuff. I have a new
> laptop running windows. I have a couple of pretty old PCs. I installed
> knoppix on one, and vector linux on the other. I only have one monitor,
> so at the moment I am plying with vector linux. I'm starting to get the
> idea I need ftp or telnet servers to ftp/telnet between these machines
> ? I have a netgear wireless router connected to my cable modem.

Well I suggest ALL your linux /etx/hosts file should contain the other
nodes on your LAN and /etc/resolv.conf can have your ISP's dns ip
addresses for external name resolution or router if it is doing DNS
for you.

Your default route on each machine should be the next node towards the
internet (your router).

If sshd service/deamon is running and no firewall blocking on any
machine, you would be able to do a
ssh surfunbear@laptop
and run just about anything on the laptop.

example /etc/hosts for all machines
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.1.1 router.mylan.invalid
192.168.1.2 knoppix.mylan.invalid
192.168.1.3 laptop.mylan.invalid
192.168.1.4 vector.mylan.invalid

I suggest whatever you name your lan you add .invalid as part of
domain name for just in incase any mail leaves for the internet (WAN).
Example root email gets sent to the WAN. If so, upstream Mail servers
can filter .invalid into the bit bucket.

$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver 192.168.1.1 <=== assumes router doing DNS

$ route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 10 0 0 eth0
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 10 0 0 eth0
127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 10 0 0 eth0

See the UG Flags. That indicates default route out of the pc.

For connectivity testing you test to each point in the network like
you would test each link in a chain. Start on one end and check each
link along the way. You ping by ip addy to prove connection and ping
by name to test DNS.

Assuming you are on knoppix PC and want to test to vector the tests would be
ping -c 1 127.0.0.1 # knoppix local host
ping -c 1 192.168.1.2 # knoppix ip addy
ping -c 1 192.168.1.1 # router
ping -c 1 192.168.1.4 # vector

ping -c 1 localhosts
ping -c 1 knoppix
ping -c 1 router
ping -c 1 vector

Thanks,

It's my understanding that sshd starts up on linux by default. I put
my laptop's ip address
on the vector linux /etc/hosts. I then installed putty on my laptop and
tried to ssh to the linux box from the laptop. I got connection
refused, which is better than the timeout I had previously. Trying to
figure out what to do next ...

I guess I'll have to play with this later when I have more time. It
looks like I have to figure out the config files in /etc/ssh. Will my
router reassign the ip addresses when I turn the machines on and off ?
If so, the /etc files will need to be changed constantly I take it ?
Can I use the real ip addresses instead ?

On 25 Oct 2006 11:59:42 -0700, surf wrote:

I applaude your trimming of your response, but it
helps to at least leave who you are talking to when trimming.


> I guess I'll have to play with this later when I have more time. It
> looks like I have to figure out the config files in /etc/ssh. Will my
> router reassign the ip addresses when I turn the machines on and off ?

You may want to read http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
No idea how you have which equipment set to what setting/values.

If I could set the router for fixed ip addressing, that is what I
would do. If not, I would create scripts to maintain /etc/hosts.

> If so, the /etc files will need to be changed constantly I take it ?

Yep, I created /etc/dhclient-exit-hooks to maintain ip numbers in my
config files on my Mandriva Linux dhcp connection with my cable modem.

> Can I use the real ip addresses instead ?

Thought I mentioned that you ping using ip addresses in my last post.