Hello network gurus out there.

Can anyone tell me whether I can have a direct connection (ethernet cable) between a XP machine and Linux and get samba and internet proxy to work on the XP box?

The laptop is my wifes and is setup with her work's domain and uses DHCP (niether of which I am not allow to change) and the linux machine is my home pc so I can make any changes to it.

I have just connected the two ethernet cards with a twisted pair cable but when I try to ping either machine by it's hostname ... niether is found.

All the information I have found so far involves creating a workgroup on the windows machine and giving it a static ip .... but I cannot do this.

The main thing I want to do is setup samba file sharing and make my linux pc a proxy server, so she can connect to the internet (through the ethernet connect) while I am connected.

If anyone can offer any assistance I would appreciate it.

Matt

Welcome to LQ.

What happens when you try to ping the IP of the other machine?

Why can't you use static addresses? Do you mean they didn't work?

From the xp laptop when I try to ping my linux box I get:

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C:\WINDOWS\system32>ping 192.168.0.1

Pinging 192.168.0.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Destination host unreachable.
Destination host unreachable.
Destination host unreachable.
Destination host unreachable.

Ping statistics for 192.168.0.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

C:\WINDOWS\system32>
----------------

When I try to ping the xp laptop from my linux machine I get:

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$ ping uk36326
ping: host host uk36326
$
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I don't have a ip address for the xp laptop because it is set to use DHCP and we don't have admin rights on it (work machine). Is there any hope in getting the two machines connected for file and internet connection sharing?

'ipconfig' (on xp laptop) gives this:

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C:\WINDOWS\system32>ipconfig

Windows IP Configuration


Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected

Ethernet adapter {BC168702-1A22-4103-AB5B-96307FD3B7BF}:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 0.0.0.0
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 0.0.0.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

C:\WINDOWS\system32>
----------------

Looking at this output the answer seems pretty self expanatory ... the xp machine thinks it's ethernet LAN socket is not connected, but the cat5 cable is connected to ethernet card of my linux machine???

You need to use a crossover network cable. You mentioned you were using twisted pair, all CAT5/6 is twisted pair, however to connect two NIC's without a switch or a hub you need a crossover. Even when you get this, you will still not be able to set the IP on the XP box without Admin rights. If you request that a sysadmin set a specific IP for the network card they may do it for you, or you could set you linux box up as a DHCP server.

Thomas

OK, I'll try the crossover cable and the DHCP server option.

Thanks.