Apologies. I know this is utterly basic stuff for most here, but I wouldn't even know where to look for an answer (except LQ ).

Setup: My desktop PC and a (new) netbook, for the specs see my signature. Both have an ethernet port. I assume I can put a cable in the respective sockets and have an electrical connection. Both run mainly under openSuSE 12.1 (and also Fedora 16 and Ubuntu 12.04).

But (and it is a big but for me) how do I "introduce" the machines to each other so they allow me to move files between them?

And secondly, on the DEC-clusters of digital equipment of olden times one could issue a command like "set host [hostname]" and then work remotely on the other machine. How is this done under linux?

Any pointers, URLs, hepful comments will be highly appreciated .

At the cabling level it used to be necessary to use a special "cross-over" cable for that but moist (all?) recent network cards auto-detect the situation and handle it. Might not work if either of the computers' network chip is old.

Assuming each computer has an IP address and knows the other's then network traffic, including file transfer, can be done by giving the IP address of the other as target for the transfer. If you prefer to use names rather than IP addresses then put them in the /etc/hosts file.

Files could be transferred between computers in several ways. On of the most convenient would be to set up one computer as an NFS server and the other as its client. That way they would both be able to access a shared file system. Alternatively one could be an FTP, rsync or ssh server and the other its client (or both ways round).

If you want to work on the other computer at the command line then ssh is the common way of doing it.

Less than 2 years.

How do I assign an IP address? How do I make known the network trafics?

Could you post an example comamnd?

Okay.

Mhm. That covers both directions, i.e. I can copy to and from the netbook and copy to and from the Desktop-PC?

Can it be done graphically? From what I read X should be able to provide a way...

Assign an IP address: here.

File transfer commands: depends on the chosen transfer mechanism. More below.

AFAIK rsync is client to server (so could be both ways if both were rsync servers). FTP and ssh-based copying work both ways.

Yes -- X can be run over an ssh connection.

okay that one is on me. It'll take some time to test this though. I'll be back then.

Any mor pointers how it is done or do I use Google?

I do realize that this is all very basic stuff but this is actually the very first time I have the chance to play with networking. Up to now, my ethernet ports were de-activated. I live in the country, network connectivity is provided by a mobile connection USB-stick (superseding my 56k modem). I really do have to start at the beginning.

No problem

Yes -- start by netsearching. Quite a few hits for "X over ssh". If you have any doubts then ask -- ideally in a new thread.

Acually linux is living faster than these solutions . The search results pointed unanimously to solutions with "ifconfig" of venerable age. Since I depend from a network connectivity via a "mobile" USB connection I have to use the young networkmanager. Which allows the handling of ethernet connections as well. Hence a better search term proved to be "networkmanager set up ethernet" . Thanks anyhow for putting my foot on the first step of the road .

Don't worry that I solved my problem more than theoretically. I have no idea of how to parameterize all those net-related input forms but hopefully I'll have a go at them over the weekend. Nice weekend to you, too.

Okay, in the appropriate menu of network manager I simply filled in imaginary IP addresses (PC: 192.168.1.69 and netbook: 192.168.1.70), the same netmask for both (255.255.255.0) and used the USB mobile internet stick as gateway with the IP-address as provided by "route -n". The machines can ping each other and exchange some data(?). Dunno what that is, but the original problem is solved. Thanks, catkin .

Gahh. Would you believe it? I'm using SuSE for more than 10 years and still don't realize that they produce a really solid and dependable documantation. Thats why I bought it in the first place (boxed, with several pounds of printed and bound SuSE / Linux books) and bought it even several times ... ah, well, if anybody needs the information:

http://doc.opensuse.org/documentatio...filetrans.html
http://doc.opensuse.org/documentatio...e/cha.nfs.html

And of course the entire load:

http://doc.opensuse.org/

Incredible. And a good example that one sees least and last what is right under ones nose.