I'm having trouble configuring a home network in linux, using suse 8.2 and xp pro on a laptop. I'm new to both linux and networking, so this may be something really simple I'm missing. The machines can't ping each other by name or IP.

There's no hardware router or hub, just a crossover cable (which works fine)
eth0 goes out to the internet, and is set to the static IP from my DSL provider
eth1 goes to the laptop via the crossover cable, and is set to 192.168.1.1
the windows laptop is set up as 192.168.1.2

I can get out to the internet fine on the linux box. Both NICs work fine (double-checked by swapping them out) and show up OK with ifconfig. I've set up /etc/hosts with the new settings. I've tried turning off the firewall on linux, and on the windows box too. I've been using the suse gui to configure the routing, and route -n gives me the following:

Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
66.92.145.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth1
0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth1

All help and advice appreciated, thanks in advance

first off you need the loopback device configured.
the did you erase the localhost info from your hosts file?

also, eth0 goes to the internet right? so the eth0 should say

0.0.0.0 66.92.145.x 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

x being replaced by the number of the gateway, very likely 66.92.145.1

and there should be a loopback entry as i said above

127.0.0.0 127.0.0.1 0.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo

or something like that.

at prompt type

ifconfig lo up

then type route -n

if see lo at the end of a line then we are on the way.

i can give you command line steps i would take to do this if you don't understand. and i understand if you don't understand, as i didn't a year or so ago. not too sure about suse, but i assume normal linux commands work if it is rpm based.

Thanks for your response, and sorry about the delayed reply.

localhost was already in /etc/hosts, and lo already shows up in ifconfig.