Hi I have a fileserver which store all my files. I also have main PC which does basically all my busy work. These computers sit a few feet apart and I would like to increase the speed between them. Right now they are connected by a enthernet and the speeds are fine for 100MB, but I would like faster. I also don't want to spend the money for a gigabit switch and 2 NICs. So I was thinking, does Linux support Target Disk Mode like the MAC does.

What I want to do is use the firewire ports on the PC's and connect the computers together. I want the fileserver to show up as a regular external harddrive on my main PC so that I would get full firefire speed between the two PC's.

Is this possible?

hmm i'm looking for the exact same thing, if i find anything i will be sure to post back

however i noticed that you say you already have a fileserver setup, well you can run TCP/IP and UDP over firewire, and i find that it does give you the speed if you need it (i clocked ~25MB/s last time i did that), to do it in Linux you need to do `modprobe eth1394` then bring up the NIC (eth1 if you only have one real NIC on the system), and configure the NIC, OS X and Windows both support this, so it should be sufficient to get you the speeds you want

I however need something that will show the stuff as a drive as I want to boot a computer off it (using an ISO), so if anyone has any ideas post here

I have picked up several GigE NICs for $15 including shipping (3com) from ebay. I run a direct link between my two computers (not through the router). I use a 2nd nic in each machine to access the outside world (through router).

Another way to get to the same place.

Lazlow

Those are both really good idea's, I hadn't thought of doing a direct connection between the computers with just two gigabit NICs or running TCP/IP over firewire.

Now my question is, how would I configure the network. I currently have my network with all my computers connected to my router directly with all IP's in the 192.168.1.* subnet.

Now if I connect the two computers directly using a crossover cable or a firewire cable what would I do with my IP's? Would I assign an IP to the two new NICs also in the same subnet or would I use a different one? Also, will it make a difference since now there will be two paths to the same computer? (One through the router, and a second using the direct connection)

Thanks,

With GigE you do not need a crossover cable, a regular cable will work fine.

I just statically assign the nic an IP (in my case 192.168.1.101-104).


NFS is what I use. One assigns the ip of the server(in the NFS setup), so it follows the NIC I assign. I also run VNC in the same manner.