I'm trying to connect a Win98 and Linux machine through a serial cable. Hopefuly, this isn't the problem. Samba might not have been running at the time. And I tried it not too long ago and it didn't seem to be running and any way I tried to start it it didn't work. First answer I'm looking for is if Windows and Linux can go through a serial cable. If so, how the hell do I get Samba running?

BTW: On a note here, I'm running Slackware and am sort of new at this.

Can someone at least answer my first question. The one that asks if Linux works thru a serial cable? I'm getting impatient, and I don't believe that no one knows the answer to it. Someone has to. Or should I try another site?

You might have got a better response if you told us what you wanted to do over the serial link!!! Linux will 'work thru a serial cable' but in more than one way...

If you want to get somekinda network link up then you will need to run SLIP or PPP over the serial cable, effetively giving you a TCP/IP network, then run Samba on the linux box and access your network shares via that. If you just want command line access then you can edit /etc/inittab to enable a getty on your linux box that listens on a serial port for a 'dumb terminal', then you use some thing like HyperTerminal on Windows to emulate a VT100 (or alike) to get your connection. Bear in mind that serial connections are pretty slow. You might be better of getting a couple of cheap network cards and a cross over cable and doing it with ethernet.

HTH

Jamie...

First, in the first post, it said what I wanted to do. Second, thanks for responding. I'll have to go try it now, and continue it later.
Need... faster... computer... Ah!
Need... job... too... young... Ah!

If you literally want to do what you said in the first post then just plug the cable into both boxes - you've sucessfully connected Linux to Windows... I don't think you followed what meant when I asked what you wanted to do. You after getting things like telnet and other TCP/IP stuff up or do you just want to do some sorta simple file transfer (say like good ole LapLink)?

cheers

Jamie...

I think he could ask nicer and he would get a better response....
although jamie is pretty gracious with most ppl, regardless thier attitude

Okay, okay. I want to connect a Linux box and a Windows box together with a serial cable for file transfer. But I tried some utilities and they didn't work. I might just go out and buy a couple of ethernet cards and a cable. The programs were kppp and another ppp utility. I couldn't find any other programs. I might just toss the whole thing together.

if you could invest in a couple of nics and a hub, you could have a ton of fun with that. Figure that file transfers are going to be pretty slow anyway, yeah?
I could suggest finding nics with the Realtek 8139 chipset in them - pretty lowcost solution and good OS support pretty much anywhere...
BTW, which version of slackware you running?

Slackware 7.1. The download site for 8.0 was too slow. Anyway, I'm just giving up with the networking now. It's not important. I may create a network one day (undoubtabley (sp?)), but for now I'll leave them be.