Re: silug: IP address?

[Ray McCord <ray.mccord@gmail.com>]

Nathaniel is giving you some good pointers.

A lot of stuff is covered here, so I'll try to elaborate, from what I know:

On Mon, 27 Dec 2004 20:03:44 -0600, Nathaniel Reindl
<fiction@sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 27, 2004 at 04:39:29PM -0600, bentley_rhodes wrote:
> >      Windows. Why? Mozilla doesn't have ActiveX support, and damned if
> >      i (The Ignorant Little Linux User) know how to make it. I've tried
> 
> It's Linux that doesn't have ActiveX support.  In reality, ActiveX is
> to Java applets as applications built with MFC/C++ are to applications
> built with Java.  ActiveX controls are pretty much just native Windows
> apps in a byte-size (laugh, it's funny) chewy morsel.

ActiveX is a set of components which attempts to consolidate and
expose various pre-existing technologies, like OLE, COM objects, and
MFC. The advantages touted were that it was supposed to allow these
type of objects to be used in Web applications, portable documents
(read MS Word) and, subsequently, allow for things like MS VisualBASIC
and VBScript to be used in a way much like Java is today, using
ActiveX controls in lieu of Java applets. Point is, the platforms
ActiveX is available on was locked-in by Microsoft due to the fact
that it is dependant on so much of MS Windows' guts. MS couldn't make
it portable if they tried, as evidenced by the fact that ActiveX
controls can be used with neither Microsoft's Office for Mac nor
Internet Explorer 5.x for Mac.

> >    * get networking to work with Linux to Linux, and or Linux to
> >      Windows, and by networking i mean:
> >          o filesharing
> >          o sharing the IP or ISP (routing)
> 
> filesharing:
>     * In terms of going from Linux to Linux, use NFS whenever
>       feasible.  You're going to want to make sure, however, that you use
>       NFS only on networks you know are trustworthy.  Id est, your LAN.
>     * In terms of going from Linux to traditional UNIX, see above.
>     * In terms of going from Linux to Windows, use Samba.

There are even several alternatives to NFS which try to hammer out
NFS' perceived shortcomings/security concerns. However, NFS is pretty
standard, established, and is also quite well documented. The NAG
(Network Administrator's Guide), available from the Linux
Documentation Project (LDP, located at http://tldp.org) is a good
starting point for learning NFS. You may be able to find an RPM
containing a collection of recent docs from LDP through YUM, if you
want local copies.

In my experience, Samba does a better job at dealing with SMB and CIFS
than even Windows. LOL ;) But seriously, Samba is definitely the way
to go if you want to share files over a LAN with Windows boxen.
Personally, I don't mess with Windows boxen all that much (I consider
myself extremely fortunate, in that regard), so, if they are not on
the LDP site, I can't point you to Samba docs. Sorry. Maybe Bryan
could. He seems to know a great deal about Samba.

> sharing the IP or ISP (routing):
>     * You're going to probably want to use Steve's genfw or the
>       Shoreline Firewall to accomplish this.  They both do firewalling
>       and NAT, which is probably what you want.

Shorewall (Shoreline Firewall, as Nathaniel properly named it) is a
good bet for getting the functionality you want. Granted, this is a
stop-gap solution to your problem, and uses NAT instead of true
routing to accomplish what you want. Combine this with the BIND
(Berkeley) name server (the service is usually called "named") to
allow your LAN clients to get DHCP and DNS info from your ISP.

BIND can be setup as a caching name server, whereafter, it will cache
the ISP-originated info, while shorewall will NAT for you, allowing
all computers on your LAN to look like they are at the same IP,
unbeknownst to your ISP. This is especially helpful if you only have
dial-up Internet access, as you will likely not notice a speed loss ;)

In fact, this is how MandrakeLinux (at least, used to) does "Internet
Connection Sharing", AFAIK, though, none of these tools are
Mandrake-specific.

> >    * making a Linux Router box / NATter thing. i might even want to try
> >      messing with GNU's Zebra (http://www.zebra.org).
> 
> You're mixing up routing notions, methinks.  Zebra is more for true
> site-to-site links where one side has a subnet delegation from another
> side and whatnot.
> 
> If not, you might want to go ahead and play with Quagga while you're
> at it.

No comment on Zebra; haven't tried it.

However, it sounds to me like you already have a full plate ;)

You probably would be best served in archiving these emails and coming
back to play with some of this new stuff later on, though, rather than
overwhelm yourself.

Now that you are apparently using Gmail, you can put a 'star' on mails
containing useful tidbits, 'archive' the emails to get them out of
your inbox, then find them easily again under the 'starred' category.
It only marks the specific email, not the whole conversation, with a
star, so you will see the email in the context of the conversation
without it being ambiguous as to which email you originally marked.
Hopefully, this is useful, and I am not just preaching to the effect
of something you discovered already ;)

> >    * making my very own Linux Users Group right here in Cape Girardeau,
> >      Mo (one day, one year). Heck i might even call it 'The Ignorant
> >      Little Linux User's Group of Cape Girardeau, Mo.' Or (dare i say
> >      it), Missouri's own TILLUG of CG.M (siccum). hey i think it has a
> >      nice ring to it!
> 
> voidwhereprohibitednotvalidinpuertoricoortheunitedstatesvirginislandsnopurchasenecessaryseeclerkfordetailsdonationsnottaxdeductable
> 
> Read the fine print :)

Hmm, Nathaniel forgot: knowntocausecancerinlaboratoryanimals ! ;)
 
> >    * taking a Linux User's course or some type of computer programming
> >      course or something that would help me learn the system.
> 
> Computer programming courses these days focus more on Windows.
> Though, the CS 1xx and 2xx courses up at UIUC do have their students
> use Emacs on Solaris boxes, so hey, you might be lucky.

Bleh, in most cases you will learn everything you never wanted to know
about Windows and Cisco. :/

And, if you ever see the book "UNIX Using Linux", you know you are in
the wrong school to automatically expect any quality curriculum on the
subjects of either UNIX or Linux. This, after two schools that did use
that book, and one that did not, and comparing the quality of
non-Windows courses, availability of professors experienced with
modern UNIX-like operating systems, etc.

You have to understand, the first two years of even most 4-yr
institutions will emulate that of a run-of-the-mill 2-yr community
college, due to the desire to pick up transfer students, meet
misconceived accreditation requirements, etc. That is all business.
Given that a great many students do not tend to continue on after a
2-yr degree/community college, instead entering the workforce, most
Associate level curriculum is focused on getting people into the
workforce; basically it is "high school" for white collar types. :/

So, you really don't end up seeing schools get 'academic' about
computers until you are dealing with Bachelor level curriculum. As
Metallica put it, sad, but true.

Granted, you are much more likely to find vendor-independent
curriculum at 'relevant' schools, like MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, Stanford,
Berkeley, U of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana, etc. But, there are some
less famous schools which have resisted corporate assimilation to some
degree ;)

On the up side (that is, from my point of view), I have found that
courses for general "Computer Science" do a lot more to teach stuff
that will persist beyond some company's predicted End of Life for
their Product. Many Comp Sci programs go into learning
vendor-independent programming, networking, industry standards,
etc.,such as teaching you (off the top of my head) C, Perl, named,
IEEE standards, ratified RFCs, W3C stuff, httpd, sh, UNIX/GNU tool
chains, IPSec, etc. You then usually specialize, which is where you
start really colliding with vendor-specific stuff.

> > Steven or Bryan gave me some pointers on NAT configuration, but after i
> > typed it all in i'm not sure if it works or not. or if i typed it in
> > right, or if i had a cable crossed. i bought some cards (six of them)
> > from a person on ebay, they are 3com's 3c905's and i /think/ they work.
> 
> Those 3c905's should work fine using the 3c59x driver.  Been that way
> since the 2.2 days.
> 
> > i've plugged my card in (linksys or nVidia's nforce ethernet card) and
> > the lights come on. But those are plugged into the aDSL modem. The 3com
> 
> This is usually the hard part.  Some of the really popular
> manufacturers end up having obscure chipsets for their NICs or
> whatever, or they end up putting in some sort of firewalling cruft in
> their product that doesn't play well with Linux or whatever.
> 
> I'm glad this works.
> 
> > one is plugged (through a long cable) into the windows computer. but i
> > do not see those lights come on when everything is plugged in. even when
> 
> Protip: Have you checked to see that the cable you're using is a
> crossover cable?  That is, do you know that the TX and RX lines are
> flipped going from one end to the other?
> 
> If not, that might be your problem.  If so, I'm afraid the cards are
> either some bastard breed never seen before by the kernel authors
> (unlikely) or that they're bad.

You can usually find, anymore, that new consumer-targeted networking
equipment, like hubs, DSL routers, NICs, etc., will automatically
switch the circuits internally to be compatible with both crossover
and straight-through (patch) cable. Most old stuff is not as smart
about this. You will probably never have use of a straight-through
(patch) cable, unless you get into networking infrastructure devices,
rack mounted routing equipment, etc. You *will* need crossover cable
(or, as I said, newer smart devices and any cable type) for most of
your general networking. this includes your case.

I second Nathaniel's notion that, failing the problem lies in the
cable, it is likely one or more of the NICs are bad. Kernel support
for NICs is superb. The likelihood that the NICs in question are
broken in any recent stable kernel are unrealistically remote.
 
> --
> Nathaniel Reindl
> 
>     "Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt."
>        (The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.)
>                         -- Ludwig Wittgenstein
> 
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> 

Cheers,
Ray McCord

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