v-noob: connecting two pc's through eth interface
 

good day! i am to state beforehand I am a TOTAL noob at networking, so please forgive the dumbness of my questions... last day a friend of mine asked me to setup debian on his box, i now have his pc sitting beside mine and have been trying over the last few hours to ssh onto it... of course i already have a minimal debian setup running oh his machine as well as a ssh server... i thought dhcp was the way to go, but had no luck... so i came up with the idea: do I actually need all this dhcp crap? i decided to go the "static" way and edited the eth section in the /etc/network/interfaces file as follows on both pc's:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.2
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255

files differ only on the "address" section (one is set on 192.168.1.1, 192.168.1.2 the other one)... but, needless to say, i can't seem to ping the other pc, i can't understand what i am doing wrong 'cause when i plug in my dlink ethernet modem I can see it on 192.168.1.1 (that's the modem default lan ip address) without having to run the dhcp server on it... any idea? btw, im using the ethernet cable supplied with my modem to link these two pc's... thanks in advance for your help, and forgive me for being such a nooooob at networking...

Maybe you need a different cable. The cable to connect two computers is different than the on used to connect to a network outlet.

I don't know which one your modem uses, but it might be the cable.

well, actually the dlink is nothing but a linux box itself ^^

just checked: this is a "cat 5 utp ethernet cable"... think it will do?

We know you've got a cat5 cable. But do you have a "crossover" cable? You can tell by looking at the way the 8 wires are connected to the plug. You should be able to find pictures with Google.

It's impossible for us to know for sure what kind of cable you are using if you don't state what kind of modem you have. Is it a modem+router with several ports or a simple modem with a single port?

Anyway, you should be able to tell if the cable works easily: there's a light next to your socket that should light up when the cable is plugged in at both ends.

If the cable works, your firewall (iptables?) might be blocking the pings.