Ok, this post could have gone in several different forums, but I think you guys would be best able to handle this.
My situation:
I have an old laptop that I would like to install slackware 10 on ( i don't think the specs matter at the moment though I will say that it's a Netgear FA411 network card.) This laptop does not have a CD-ROM drive, there fore I have elected to do a NFS install. I got the bare.i boot disk and the two install disks and loaded those into the laptop's ramdisk. I then loaded the PCMCIA.dsk and network.dsk. I had a bit of trouble getting it to see my network card, but it finally did. I then tried to go through the setup process and selected a NFS install. The machine I was trying to install FROM is a desktop that I have Slack 10 running on successfully (though this box was not connected to the internet and I had not tried to set up the network settings until now.) I entered the info that the NFS install prompts asked of me and when it tried to install I got an error message "RPC: port mapper failure - RPC: unable to recieve"
Ok, here's where I think I'm making a mistake. As a n00b, I am fully entitled to make mistakes and do so on a regular basis. When asked what the Slackware source directory is, my response is /cd/Slackware because it's in the cd-rom of my desktop. Can I do that?? Do I need to copy it to the hdd??
Also, if I try to ping either machine (from the other), I get the response "Network is unreachable" Although when pinging the loopback address everything is fine.
Hmm, let's see...anything else I need to tell you <reading over post>
*Yes, I did use a crossover cable as I am connecting computer to computer.
*Yes I am a n00b.

Any help would be greatly appreciated
melee

Ok, slight update. I can now ping from my laptop. If I ping the laptop's IP address (from the laptop), all is well. If I ping the desktop's IP address (again, from the laptop), the packets are sent, but not recieved. i.e. "4 packets transmitted, 0 packets recieved, 100% packet loss". I am still getting the "network is unreachable" error message from the Desktop. Which leads me to beleive that the laptop is probably fine, the problem is most likely the network settings on the desktop. How do I tell if the desktop sees my nic?
melee

Other than ifconfig, what commands can I use to configure my network?
melee

umm, should I post this in the Slackware forum instead?
melee