I Recently Installed Fedora Core 3 On My Barracuda 250GB SATA Hard Drive And Need My Back Up Files From A Variety Of Operating Systems/Computers.

Ive Tried Several FAQ Boards, IRC Channels, And Forum Tutorials; Non Actually Helped At All...

I Need To Network Directly With A Duel Boot Platform With Windows XP Pro [Glitchy Bull S**t Edition] And Mandrake 10.1 [F**ked Up Piece Of S**t Edition].

Im Hoping To Setup An FTP Server On The Mandrake 10.1 Partition And Distribute All The Files To My Fedora Core 3 Box (Using The Network Obviously).

How Do I Set Up A Network Using Only A Cross Cable? (I Have Only Been Able To Go Online Threw A Router That I Currently Dont Have Anymore...)

I Need Some Help Setting Up DSN, Samba, And Device Configuration (In The Network Configuration Application)

Oh, And Yes, I Did Read The Newbie's Guide To Small Home Lan On This Website. Sorry I Cant Show You A Link The Forum Has Limited My Account...

It Helped, But I Still Wasnt Able To Finished The Tutorial Since The Network Didnt Work (I Did Manage To Activate My Device, But Couldnt Figure Out Why It Wasnt Recignized On Windows [Windows "ipconf" Kept On Saying My IP Address Was Different Then What I Set It To In The Static IP Addresses In FC3])

Please Help Ive Been Trying To Resolve This Problem For Days

Thanks In Advance...

Well, first of all, setting up two computers with a cross cable is annoyingly easy. I assume you have one built, don't you? If not, that is step one. Step two is to configure both with the same IP scheme and subnet mask. You don't need a Default Gateway seeing as how it's a simple connection and you won't be connecting to the internet in the process. Just ensure that the two are the same scheme:

192.168.1.x
255.255.255.0

So Comp A will be 192.168.1.1

and Comp B will be 192.168.1.2

Or whatever you want.

Samba,

It's actually pretty easy. One idea is to just use the default with user level security and the home directories. just don't forget to add the user with the /etc/samba/smbpasswd -a {username} command. Without it, all is hopeless. Samba can also be configured through the GUI (which is Super-Easy).

feel free to e-mail me with any questions and I'll see if we can't make this right.