HI everyone,

At our centre for children we have two computers running different OS'es to demonstrate different environments. One box runs on openSuSe 10.3 and the other one on fedora 6.

1. Is it possible to transfer files from one to the other networking through USB Dongle's??

2. What about internet sharing through the Dongle's on these two boxes??

Thank
AlokM

If you are talking about USB Ethernet adapters, then yes there is no problem at all, it is just a normal network.

USB-to-USB transfer cables may be a different story, but I have not had personal experience with them. My understanding is that you just run TCP/IP over USB, so in theory it should be no different than setting up a normal LAN.

Just using regular Ethernet is going to make your life much simpler and more reliable.

Let me explain to you friends, that I am working in a very remote village area. I have managed to salvage four old computers for teaching the kids. All on different OS'es. I do not have hubs or cables to network them. The nearest place to access hardware is 200 kms away..!!

But I have two USB dongles.. the kinds one uses to connect a gprs phone to the computer for internet. I want to use these to connect for file transfer from one computer to the other as well as to share the internet between the computers.

Now I know that there are various methods for networking.. ethernet card, cabling.. but the question is can it be done through the USB dongles and HOW..?? Or that I have to make a three day round trip to get the hardware (cables etc..)??

In that case, I have no idea what you are referring to by "USB dongles". Can you find a picture of something similar online perhaps? A USB cable to connect a phone to a computer is going to be proprietary to that phone manufacturer, so I am not sure what you are trying to do here.

Without knowing the details it is difficult to say but my first guess would be no. AFAIK your dongle is just a plain USB cable and basically you can not directly connect two computers via a standard USB be cable.

Without additional hardware except for cables you could connect two computers via the serial or parallel port.

alokm

I grew up in a remote area as well. In most areas there are people who come out at least once a month. Talk to one of these people. They are usually willing to stop and pick up stuff before they come out. Since you have internet you can show the person what you want. Ethernet cables are a $10 (at the highest) item. If you get a cat5e crossover cable you can plug directly from one computer to the next without any additional hardware. You only need the crossover (as opposed to straight pass through)cable if none of the connected computers has GigE, which is likely to be the case if you are using old hardware.

Good Luck
Lazlow

A bluetooth capable phone can be connected to a computer which does not have onboard USB through a USB bluetooth connector (dongle) here is the link to what the dongle looks like
http://www.gearxs.com/gearxs/images/...USB-DONGLE.jpg

Also found something on the opensuse103_reference.pdf, page 558
pasting it for you and will try and see if it works

33.2.5 Example — Establishing a Network
Connection via Bluetooth

In this example, a network connection is established between the hosts H1 and H2.
These two hosts have the Bluetooth device addresses baddr1 and baddr2 (determined
on both hosts with the command hcitool dev as described above). The hosts should
be identified with the IP addresses 192.168.1.3 (H1) and 192.168.1.4 (H2).
The Bluetooth connection is established with the help of pand (personal area networking
daemon). The following commands must be executed by the user root. The description
focuses on the Bluetooth-specific actions and does not provide a detailed explanation
of the network command ip.
Enter pand -s to start pand on the host H1. Subsequently, establish a connection on
the host H2 with pand -c baddr1. If you enter ip link show on one of the
hosts to list the available network interfaces, the output should contain an entry like the
following:
bnep0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop qlen 1000
link/ether 00:12:34:56:89:90 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
Instead of 00:12:34:56:89:90, the output should contain the local device address
baddr1 or baddr2. Now this interface must be assigned an IP address and activated.
On H1, do this with the following two commands:
ip addr add 192.168.1.3/24 dev bnep0
ip link set bnep0 up
On H2, use the following commands:
ip addr add 192.168.1.4/24 dev bnep0
ip link set bnep0 up
Now H1 can be accessed from H2 at the IP 192.168.1.3. Use the command ssh
192.168.1.4 to access H2 from H1, assuming H2 runs an sshd, which is activated
by default in openSUSE®. The command ssh 192.168.1.4 can also be run as a
normal user.


Thanks for your help guys, will tell you if it works... still have to work at the internet connection sharing.
Alok

It would have helped a lot if you said they were Bluetooth in the first place...

Yes, you can network via BT by setting up what is referred to as a PAN (Personal Area Network); basically, you get the BT adapters paired to each other and then run TCP/IP over them, at which point it is no different than any other network (just quite slow). The setup will end up being slightly different as the different OSs will not be exactly the same, but you can get the general concept from the following pages:

Building a Bluetooth Network with Linux
Gentoo Linux Bluetooth Guide

whoops sorry about that!! Will try to be more careful in future..Thanks for all the help but it seems I will have to go to the big city anyway sometime as one of my bluetooth adaptors seems to be malfunctioning..

I can detect it through 'hcitool dev' but it does not detect even my modem during the hcitool scan.. methinks the usb bluetooth might have some problem...!! where the other usb adaptor seems to be detecting the modem fine... sooooo... I will get the cables and also a spare adaptor and then try to work it out...
Thanks again
Alok

OK guys,

I managed to get two ethernet cards and the cables NOW how do we get these two systems to talk to each other..... I am giving the static ip address on computer one called H1 running FC6 as 192.168.0.1 with netmask as 255.255.0.0 but when I see the connection details it seems to take the IP address as 169.254.10.195...?? H2 is running Suse 10.3 what should be the method of networking. PS I tried the LAN guide given on the site but it seems I am doing something wrong.....

Alok

169.254.xxx.xxx IPs are assigned when the DHCP client fails to acquire an address from the server. What did you use to configure a static IP address?

You need an ethernet crossover ethernet cable to directly connect to PCs without using a hub/switch. You should be able to see the network adapters link LEDs illuminated on both computers. Also make sure your IP address range and netmask match on both computers like
192.168.0.xxx netmask 255.255.255.0

This is the output from my Comp 1 running on fc6 which is also supposed to be sharing internet connection with my comp2 (which is not happening as yet) running on Suse 10.3 and they are connected through crossover cables.


[root@xx ~]# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
[root@xx ~]# service network restart
Shutting down interface gadlocal: [ OK ]
Shutting down loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up interface gadlocal: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
Error adding address 192.168.0.1 for eth0.
[ OK ]

[root@xx ~]# ip addr
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000
link/ether 00:e0:18:fc:15:03 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.0.1/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global eth0
3: sit0: <NOARP> mtu 1480 qdisc noop
link/sit 0.0.0.0 brd 0.0.0.0


[root@xx ~]# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
0.192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0
1.

At this stage I can ping the other computer..192.168.1.2
After a few minutes it automatically starts the network again and this is the next output..????


[root@xx ~]# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0

[root@xx ~]# ip addr
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000
link/ether 00:e0:18:fc:15:03 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 169.254.10.195/16 brd 169.254.255.255 scope global eth0
inet6 fe80::2e0:18ff:fefc:1503/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: sit0: <NOARP> mtu 1480 qdisc noop
link/sit 0.0.0.0 brd 0.0.0.0


The other part of the problem is that whenever I am trying to connect to the LAN my internet connection stops working....???


I think I have made some major goof up...!!

Alok

OK friends I think I have wandered off on this thread and starting with the USB adaptors I have returned to crossover cables...
The whole issue is getting confused here so I would start a new thread with the relevant topic of Configuring a small home network (two computers) with Samba file sharing and Internet connection sharing using the GPRS over rfcomm0. Maybe there are others who will also benefit as me in this search.
Thanks to all of you
Alok