Network XP laptop and Red Hat box

Hello

I am a complete newbie to networks and don't really have a clue. Have searched this forum but haven't found an easy (layman termed) solution yet!

Anyway...... I just want to network my XP laptop with my linux box running Red Hat. I've got some network cable and have plugged in to both machines network cards. I have set the IP address on windows. How do I do it on Linux? AND even though the cable is plugged in on the laptop, it still tells me that : "Local Area Connection - A network cable is unplugged". What software do I need to use to see each machine?

Please can somebody help me, I don't know what the hell I'm doing!

Thanks

Possibly the cable is of the wrong sort. You need a crossover cable rather than a straight network cable. With a crossover cable the cores go to different pins, ask someone who knows about network cables to explain this (or just go out and buy one!).

After you have the cabling sorted, go to a terminal on your linux box and type:

Where 192.168.1.1 is the IP you want to assign to the Linux box and 255.255.255.192 is the netmask you want to assign (note that the netmask must be the same on both machines).

Hope this helps.

Thanks alot AlexGreg!

Can you just answer me this too :
how will I know if my cable is of a crossover sort? AND what software etc would I need to install on both machines so that I they can see eachother?

Cheers

I dont know how else you would test the cable beside checking to see if your network was up(chances are you don't have a crossover cable, they're cheap so you should just buy one to save you the greif).

I suggest following gregs instructions, pay attention to the subnet mask, then using either linux terminal or windows command window, ping one of the coresponding addresses.



you shouldn't need any extra software, if you want to network your computers, thats more complicated, I think the easiest way(assuming you don't have samba running) is that you can share a windows directories then mount it on the linux machine with something like
mount -fstype smb /home/someuser/randomemptydir //xpname/dirname

or, a great, easy to use tool to do that for you is called LinNeighborhood, download, install and run.

im no expert so you should probably man mount(in terminal type man mount)
good luck.

Do either of theese computers have access to the internet, or are you just trying to get a closed 2 computer peer - peer network going. Set them bolth to the same netmask, and give them different IP's but only change the last octet per the subnet (i.e. 192.168.1.1 for one nic on the linux machine and 192.168.1.X (2-254) for any other machines connecting. If you want to expand your network at a later time it would probobly be cost effective to purchase a switch or a router, you would only use a router if you connected to cable or dsl and didn't want to use the linux box as a router. Prolly safe to just get a switch, then you don't need new cables, yay.

If you are connecting to the net, what one connects to the net with what medium (network card, usb, dial-up) so we can get you routing too ;}.