Hi all.

I've just stepped into Linux as a newbie and the security here is great.

I'm on an AMD1100 with mandrake 8.2 utilising Bastille and Squid behind a Smoothwall 2 firewall.

Now I've taught myself to see the mail on the servers and download only the ones I want, I am much happier thanks to PostArmor 1.3

Here's the next crucial step for me to get away from that horible old system called windows.

I need to connect to other PC's in my network. I intend to install Mandrake on all of them.

OK! I'm a thicky and need to be walked through it step by step.

Can anyone help me or direct me to a fools guide to connecting the coms together?

Under, dare I say its name, windows, the p2p network was so easy. Under Mandrake, it seems to be so much more demanding. Iguess this is why Lnux is so strong.

Chris

Welcome to LQ.

You will need to come up with a basic network structure. There is some information about this on the LQ Wiki:
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Network_Addressing

To enter your chosen IP addresses, netmasks and gateways you can run "netconf" in Mandrake.

Don't hesitate to reply if you need any clarification.

Mandrake has all the tools you need in the mandrake Control Center (mcc). In the Internet & Networking section you have DrakFW for setting up the smoothwall firewall. Of course you are already using that. There is also DrakGW which you need to setup if you want to do internet connection sharing. And finally there is another one, I think it is DrakConnect which is used to setup your ethernet cards or the dialup modem. Using those three tools you should be able to setup your network and have the computers talking. Of course if you want to use ssh then you would tell the smoothwall firewall to open ssh port on that computer. And the same goes for ftp or whatever. Look for documentation on the CD. Mandrake usually has good "step-by-step" (with pictures) guides for everything you could want to do.

Assuming I can get the network setup, how do I "share" the files or printers? (Yes, I have a Windows background.)

I'm running Gentoo (or will be once the compile finishes - it's only been going for two days now...) and can do Slackware and Knoppix if necessary. Or Feather Linux.

You can run samba to allow file/print sharing with a windows machine.

To share files and printers you need to edit your samba configuration "smb.conf" see the examples in the file and:
man smb.conf

My apologies - I meant how do I share files/printers between two Linux boxes?

For files take a look at nfs:
http://nfs.sourceforge.net/nfs-howto/

For printers you can use CUPS:
http://www.cups.org/

d_r,
Thanks for that. I'd always skimmed through the stuff about NFS - thought it was just some esoteric fs.