Setting up a home network

mrh7184 · 11-23-2005, 07:01 AM

I have a lot of PC's/laptops in the house and I want to setup a wired/wireless network.

I have one old PC that I want to use as a print server. It has a USB printer connected to it. The PC is running Suse 10.0.

I also have a cable modem which then connects to a 8port hub. One of the ports then runs a cable upstairs from the basement into a wireless hub.

My goal is to setup print sharing, so that any PC wether it runs Linux or Windows XP can print to that printer.

I also want that print server to be a file server so anyone of us can backup data to it.

As far as the wiring goes, I'm pretty sure I got it all down. I'm just not sure how to setup my PC as a print server/file server and how to get Windows and other linux machines to see the printer and hard disk to file share.

My entire network uses linksys routers/hubs/nic

pingu · 11-23-2005, 08:54 AM

That shouldn't be any problem at all.
Since you have Windows-computers in your network, use samba.
You can easily share resources sucha as files and printers that way.

fouldsy · 11-23-2005, 08:59 AM

So long as your USB printer is set up correctly and working, you can easily use Samba to share this out to Windows machines. Can also trick it out with the Windows drivers so each Windows machine automatically gets the correct drivers. File sharing is also easily done with Samba too, allowing sharing between your Windows + Linux machines. Depending on who else is accessign the net, you could run your cable modem through the Linux box as well, giving you additional web caching + filtering but that might not be neccessary if it's just yourself using it.

mrh7184 · 11-23-2005, 09:13 AM

is samba easy to setup through SUSE 10.0?

pingu · 11-23-2005, 10:00 AM

Don't know about SuSe - that's my number one hate-distro...
But Fedora, Mandriva and Mepis all had a basic setup that just worked, install it with SuSe's tools (YAST?) not from source. Installing from source means you have to do (probably) all config yourself.

mrh7184 · 11-23-2005, 11:59 AM

i tried mandriva but it won't install the 32bit version on my system, the 64 bit works though (i have the amd 64 processory) - maybe that's why?? but suse 10.0 32bit works fine loading..

mandriva 64bit doesn't recongize my wireless drivers, but it also works fine in Suse.. but mandriva seems to be a lot more user friendly for the beginner. i couldn't get the ndiswrapper/wireless working in fedora either..