I'm running Suse 10.1 on my desktop. I've just got a laptop which is now duel boot xp and suse 10.1 also.

My question is where do I start in setting up the desktop and laptop so that I can share files and internet with my laptop running suse or xp?

My internet connects to the pc via an adsl usb modem, and I connect the laptop with a ethernet connection. (pc to pc, rather than server to pc cable).

When I look in Yast there are alot of network options and I don't know which does what.

I assume for file sharing I'll need nfs?
Not sure about sharing internet connection.

Pointers to some good howto's would be apreciated.

Internet sharing.

There are two options. 1. Set up internet sharing with the machine connected to the ADSL modem. This machine will need two nic's, one connected to the ADSL modem, and the other to your laptop. If you direct connect it, you need a cross over cable. You can buy or make your own. This is not a standard ethernet cable. Make sure ( if you buy it ) to specify a cross over cable. The other cable option is to buy a hub, and use regular ethernet cables.

2. Buy a router, connect your ADSL modem to the router, ( ISP side ) and connect both machines to the router via regular ethernet cables. This is the easy way to go, and allows for adding more machines in the future.

File sharing. 1. Linux to Linux. Easy way is to set up NFS, hard way set up one as a Samba sever, the other becomes samba client. Printing linux to linux, set up cups.

2.Linux to windoze, set up linux as a samba server, and set up windoze as the client. This will also allow for windoze to linux printing. If you want to print from linux to windoze, you have to share a printer in windbloze and add the printer in linux. I have never gone through the frustration of this type of printer sharing. I made samba my print server. Windoze boxes at my home all print to linux.

Since you have a windoze system, you will need to set up samba one way or another. If I were you, I would set up NFS first. You will find samba a bit of a challenge. Here is a good link for lots of information on setting up samba.

http://us1.samba.org/samba/docs/using_samba/toc.html

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply, my main concern is Linux to Linux, it is a cross over cable so sounds like I'll be OK without a router/hub.

I'll give the NFS a go first

Seem to have hit a problem. Following this tutorial, http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/16022.html
I have set up PC (server) as ip address 10.0.1.1 and laptop (client) ip address 10.0.1.2.

The laptop displays an icon saying wires network connection. And seems ok.

The pc displays an icon but it takes a while to connect saying requesting hostname, then after a while it says connected.

So I have a connected icon displaying on both the PC and laptop.

Now heres the problem, when I try to ping:

From laptop to PC: ping 10.0.1.1 I get: From 10.0.1.2 icmp_seq=1 etc Destination Host Unreachable.

From PC to laptop: ping 10.0.1.2 I get: connect: Network is unreachable

I don't realy understand the whole ip address thing. Will the usb modem have a different address to yhr ethernet port?

Can you assign any ip address to an LAN port or will I have to find it from somewhere?

Note: at the minute I'm only trying to set up the NFS, but am stuck on the network card setup.



Update: Now two machines are pinging, got ip addresses from ifconfig

What am I doing wrong?

I've got the two machines pinging, PC set up as NFS server, host wildcard as *, created an export directory, made eth connection internal zone in firewall and enabled NFS server in system services.

But when trying to set up laptop as NFS client when I click on add it comes up with nothing in the choose option for NFS server hostname. I try to enable NFS, but it says returned 6 program not configured.

nfs-utls installed on both machines.

If I try to enter server host name etc manually I get error, unable to mount the NFS enties from /etc/fstab

Leave NFS alone, until you can ping between the two machines. You need IP connectivity for NFS or any file sharing to work. The IP addresses you picked are fine. 10.x.y.z addresses are private class A addresses. You will need to add a entry to your routing table in order to route and ping between these two machines. Both machines will need a route added.

Your ADSL modem connected to your PC will have a different IP address. If you did not configure it, then your ISP is probably running DHCP, and assigned your interface connected to the modem an IP address. That is fine, and since you can get to the internet from your PC, there is no issue there.

I can now ping between two machines, ping 10.0.0.2 from pc and ping 10.0.0.1 from laptop.

I can also ping local ip address of the ADSL modem on the PC from the laptop.

But I cannot ping remote ip address from laptop through PC. Do I need to set up masquerading?

I have again set up PC as NFS server, but when I try to set up laptop as a NFS client (from laptop) it doesn't find pc NFS server.


Also:
Every time I connect LAN cable, internet is disabled on PC through ADSL, I have to run lillall pppd and run startup scripts again. What is causing this?



UPDATE: Now when I set up either machine as an NFS server, when trying to set the other as the NFS client, it only finds the server from the same machine. ie when setting up laptop as a client it finds Linux-Laptop server. And on PC it finds Linux-PC server. What do I do to find the server on the other machine?

Got NFS working, set up PC as a server through yast, and imported directory over LAN from laptop manually: mount -t 10.0.0.1:/.............. etc.

Don't know what happened to yast setup??

Only one problem, when LAN is active the internet connection is disabled on PC. What could be causing this?