Hello!

I have 2 computers that I want to connect to the Net using a network.

One is a laptop, running WinXP and I have installed in it 2 network cards, a built in one and a PCMCIA card that I have from previous laptops. This machine is already online and has a static IP from the university.

The other one is a desktop, running a fresh install of Red Hat 9.0.

I want to connect both to the internet using NAT on the WinXP machine. I have set up internet connection sharing on the laptop, and the network cards are both detected and running.

I have 2 questions really:

1. I understand from reading on the net that I don't need a hub to connect just 2 computers. Apparently a crossover UTP Cat 5 cable would do it. Is this correct? Any more details I should know about?

2. What kind of network settings do I need to use to configure the RH machine? Would it need an internal IP (one not from the Internet-only pool)? What about the subnet? And what would the gateway be? And what would the Windows machine need to be configured with?

Thank you very much in advance. Once this is up and running, I will be able to learn Linux computing and do things on that machine that Windows just cannot do as well

eKstreme

Crossover cable will work fine.

Set the linux IP address to 192.168.0.2 Gateway is your "router" which would be your XP computer which we will set for 192.168.0.1. Since the XP machine has two nics one to the internet and one to your LAN.

Sebastian

If you enabled "Share internet connection" at XP, it will act as a DHCP server also. So, you (if everything goes normally) just have to enable dhcpclient at your RH9 box.

netconfig -d eth0

All the settings will be assigned by XP to your Linux box (IP, Gateway, DNS, Subnet, etc.)

Shows how much windows I use

Yep. Worked like a charm! Thank you very much for all your help!

did u have to use samba?

Not for just getting internet access from the RH machine. Samba is for file sharing between the computers, which is the next step. I'll post back when I get it to work if you want...

I just posted a kind of similar question, and then realised I should have done a search... I will try this out (need to get my friend to explain how first)....