I have two laptops. I want to access the hdd of 1 by 2. 1 is running linux, 2 is running windows XP. Is this doable? USing a 10mbps cable?

Yep. You need to set up a LAN and can use Samba to look inside your windows

to be more specific you either need a HUB/Switch or a crossover cable to connect the 2 systems.

either way they both need to be on the same IP scheme to talk with each other. plus as you will need samba for windows to see the linux box, and smbfs for linux to mount your windows shares.

Is the crossover cable the same as a 10mps cable? I plug one end on laptop1 and the other on laptop2.
Is Samba for windoz free?
So for the windows laptop to see the linux laptop, I only need Samba on windowz? Nothing special running on the linux box?
And what do mean same IP scheme?

Thanks!!

I think Samba is just the regular windows share in windows. By the way, you will have to purchase a router to get this to work.

1) I don't know what you mean by a 10mps cable, but I will presume you are trying to do this with ethernet cables. A crossover cable is one with the transmit/receive wires switched, such cables are orange to indicate they are crossovers.

2) Windows already has "samba" in it. You need to make sure "File and Printer Sharing" is enabled for the network card. Find the card you want to use under "Control Panel/Network", right-click and choose properties, and make sure File and Printer Sharing is installed an enabled.

3) Give each machine an explicit IP address. You can do this by choosing Properties for TCP/IP protocol in Control Panel/Networks/Your Ethernet Card. Your Linux machine should have a graphical program for setting your network parameters (for example in SuSE you can go Control Center/Yast2/Network Card). As for addresses, I suggest 192.168.1.1 (with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0) for your windows machine and 192.168.1.2 (with the same subnet mask) for your Linux machine.

4) It's easier if you try to get the *Linux* laptop to see the *Windows* laptop. Make sure the smbclient stuff is installed in the Linux machine. In the Windows machine, share a directory you want to make available (right click and choose Sharing...), give it a name, and make sure there's no password set for the file sharing (in XP Home you won't have to worry - it won't let you put a password on it). Then go to the Linux machine and open Konqueror or Nautilus and enter "smb://192.168.1.1/<file share name>" in the address bar.

With any luck, you will see your Windows files in the browser window.

Hopefully I didn't leave anything out - others can feel free to fill in something I missed.

If you go back on the internet with the Windows machine, make sure you disable the file share, or you will *slightly* compromise the Windows security.

In actual fact, it might be a easier if you don't use Samba (I'm saying this because in the past, I have often found that Samba has been a pain (especially with permissions) to set up (and takes about a year to compile), but perhaps that's because I want to use a complicated setup). Anyway, once you can get the two machines to ping each other (enter into some kind of terminal (Command Prompt, in the case of Windows) "ping 192.168.1.1" or whatever), then set up an FTP daemon on the Linux machine (your distro should come with some easy setup). Then you can browse at your leisure by going to 'ftp://192.168.1.1' or whatever from windows.

(Incidentally, SFTP is a much preferred alternative to FTP, but more complicated to set up, and Windows doesn't come with a builtin client. Furthermore, there's no security issue as far as sniffing is concerned, because you're on an ad-hoc network)

There is no such thing as 10 Mbit cable. The cable is stated as Category 3 or Category 5. Category 3 can not transfer faster than 10 Mbits. Category 5 can transfer 100 Mbits. Category 5e can handle up to 1000 Mbits. There is a new type of cable called Category 6 but it is marginally better than Category 5e if the Category 6 cable is up to Category 6 specs. All you need is a cable from computer to the next. Like somebody said you need a crossover cable if you do not want to spend $15 to $20 for a hub. Crossover cable is not special. It is just straight through cable with certain wires rearranged to accept host to host transfers. Any straight through cable can be turned into crossover. Make sure you label it as crossover cable after the change.

SAMBA is the only way to transfer files from the Windows computer to the Linux computer without going through ftp mess. People said that SAMBA is hard does not know Linux too well. In Linux, you will need to take a close look at permissions for directories and files. SAMBA has an option that you can tell it to save either directories or files to a certain permission. Read the manual for SAMBA.

The speed of SAMBA is much faster than sftp and probably ftp.

ho_10, you are joking that it takes a year to compile SAMBA. What computer do you have an 8086.

yes i would agree that setting up a samba share can be a challange, but if you take the time to read some of the very good 'HOWTOs' out there for samba basics it is really not all that tough.

to compile samba? why, just install it and go forward. this is one thing i really like about rpm or .deb based distros i can use yum or apt-get install samba and in a very short time its up and running. all that is needed at that point is to configure the shares, set permissions, and reset the samba server and you are done.

my first attempt took my about 1-2hrs to read, re-read, and configure, then test my samba server. after the first time i could do it under 30min, now i can do it even faster.

there is a fast easy cheat if you want to use it once you have a TCP/IP connection between the 2 systems:

put winSCP (google search for it) on your XP box. make sure ssh is running on your laptop (linux box) and then you can move files back and forth in a GUI fassion just like using windows explorer with 2 side by side directories open.

click and drag files from either system and they will be coppied. if you double click it and XP can open the file it will and run it. so if you have a .avi file on your linux system and want to watch it in WMP you could open winSCP, navigate to that .avi file, double click it and poof there is the .avi file playing in WMP. its no more difficult then opening windows explorer, navigating to a file, and executing it with a double click.

i still find it simpler to install samba, samba-common, smbfs on a linux system, share out the windows folders/directories, and configure samba to share out my home directory on the linux box. in all that might take you a few hours to overcome a learning curve and to read/follow instructions, but it is very worth it once it is up and running you will be very pleased with what you have accomplished. espeically if you had troubles and had to do it more then once.

and here is the link i use to get started with samba.

http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/samba.html

enjoy and good luck.

when you say 10Mbit cable, do you mean a CO-AX connection with end of line termination tee's ? This is the only 10Mbit cable I can think of.

If this is the case you will just need to plug each computer into eachother.
Make sure each end has an end of line termination on it!

Then its time to learn samba!! Good luck