I have a windoze machine and a linux box networked right now over ethernet, but I constantly and waiting for files to transfer from one machine to the other. I usually work on the files on the windoze machine (recording projects) and store them over on my linux box which has huge amount of free space. I am wondering how feasible it would be to network my two machines via firewire. I already have firewire on the windows box, but firewire in linux is new to me. Are there speed advantages? How do I setup a network like that? I would still need ethernet for communciation to the rest of my network, and to the world on the linux box. I basically want an uber-fast connection between my two main machines.

Any help?
(PS Mandrake 9)

--MIKE

In Linux this is no problem since both IP-over-Firewire and Ethernet-over-firewire is supported. I don't know how this works in WIndows. But I wouldn't go there if I were you since Ethernet is so much more well supported.

Supported yes, but the constraints are there. At work we do things like this over fiber but I can't afford in-house fiber. So, I am still looking for firewire options, in addition to of course using ethernet.

--MIKE

I must say that transfering files over FireWire (400mbps) is far faster than Ethernet (100mbps). I've done it via Windows/Windows, but haven't tried Windows/Linux yet.

I think I got my firewire card working in linux. I haven't done anything with it yet because I need to order another card and cable for the windows box now. (I pulled out the windows one to try it in linux). I did

insmod ohci
(it gave some weird unable to resolve symbol errors)
insmod ieee1394

modprobe ohci
modprobe ieee1394

dmesg | grep 1394 looks like

ohci1394: $Rev: 530 $ Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>
ohci1394_0: OHCI-1394 1.0 (PCI): IRQ=[9] MMIO=[dd800000-dd800800] Max Packet=[2048]
ieee1394: Host added: Node[00:1023] GUID[0011060000003162] [Linux OHCI-1394]

Does that look right?
I just want to know if this is working correctly before I try anything else. I really don't want to plug in the video camera and try it out, (it's not here right now).

--MIKE

If you are going to connect a video camera, check out this 'How to'

http://www.linux1394.org/start_req.html

You may also need to add the modules to the /etc/devices/drivers file:

Add the line 50 ieee1394
Add the line 51 ohci1394
Add the line 52 sbp2
Save the file

I think there is another module you will need as well - libraw1394
but it will tell you in the link

Jim

I say so because I did get it to work ─for a bit.
Basically, I wanted to use my Slack box as a router-firewall... for my mum's Win desktop, which ethernet cards are toast. Since I had a firewire cable, and both PCs had such socket, I decided to give it a try.
All I had to do was load the eth1394 module and everything was correctly detected. Once I plugged both computers together, the Win box did so as well, and after a simple static IP config on both PCs and very simple IPMASQ on my Linux box... I had Internet on both computers.

But then I tried to configure SMB/CIFS shares on Win... and then everything went downhill from that point (un-doing things in Win seems impossible, as some mis-configuration always remains there no matter what you do).
So now my mum's Win box complete ignores everything coming from FireWire... But the point is: it worked, flawlessly. Thus, it must be possible.

Interesting extra info: I just read somewhere that Lin and Win use different methods for wrapping eth-fw packets ─or something of the order─, and so are incompatible. I still wonder how I managed to make it work for days... (Maybe it was magic...)