I've recently installed Red Hat 7.1 on my laptop, and I've been trying my best to get it to network with a computer running WinXP (family computer which accesses the internet). I just want a simple LAN connection to it, but so far, every guide I've read about it has told me I need a router, a more recent version of RHL or to have a Linux network to connect to in order to do this. Is there any way of doing this with just my laptop and my WXP box?

Once again, I'm running RHL 7.1 on a Dell Inspiron laptop (830 MHz cpu) with a single ethernet port. The computer I want to open a LAN connection to is a custom built 2.8 GHz WXP machine with access to a cable modem. Connecting to this modem currently takes up its only network port, although I have a second card I can install. I've installed Linuxconf on the laptop, but I've been having difficulties installing Samba 2.2.8-1 (it seems to be missing some files, specifically libcrypto.so.2, libcups.so.2, libreadline.so.4 and libssl.so.2). I've been trying to get it to connect to a WinME machine so far, with seemingly no luck, although I'm more interested in connecting it to the WinXP machine. Any help would be appreciated.

Can you ping that XP machine?

No, but interestingly, I can ping the RHL machine. I think that there's some sort of loopback driver running on the ME machine I was trying to network to (the machine's IP is 127.0.0.1). I haven't got the second network card in my XP computer at the moment ... perhaps it would be a good idea to get it in there sometime.

Howzit

Well u will not need a router but maybe something called a hub/switch to connect your network. If u have problems with cash then creat a cross over cable this will allow u to connect one pc to the other.

The reason u see that IP addr 127.0.0.1 this means that it's the local machine. With windows pc give it a IP addr like 192.168.0.1/ 255.255.255.0 once that has been created type cmd ipconfig to confirm IP addr. Goto your laptop type the cmd redhat-config-network or netconfig and setup IP addr 192.168.0.2. Once this has been setup type cmd ifconfig to confirm IP addr then ping 192.168.0.1 to confirm coms between the 2 pc.

To share files with M$ XP use samba type this cmd to view the shares available under XP smbclient -L //remote_server/share, then mount //remote_server/share /mnt/mount_piont. If you change dir to /mnt/mount_piont XP files will be displayed.

chow

Thanks, aqoliveira, I'm about halfway there now ... I've got the network card in my XP box and I've been able to ping both machines (they both picked up packets over the network). Now, I have a new problem ... I can't get the smbclient to connect to the XP machine, although I have tried the commands you posted. I can't seem to view files on either side of the network (from the other respective side, of course).

I've upgraded to RHL 9 since my last visit. I still want to be able to share files between the two computers and access the net from the laptop via the XP machine. Samba works, but like I said, I can't get it to access the XP machine. I'm running a firewall, but it is set to trust my laptop's connections to it. Any ideas?

Howzit

Try disabling FW by typeing service iptables stop. Then make sure that shares r correct on XP box then try again with cmds given.

chow