Networks,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[Phil Scherzinger]

What I have is two pc's actually sitting next to each other. They are
connected to a single router so I can share the high speed connection I
have.   I would like to be able to share files and, hopefully, a printer
between the two.  Nothing too fancy.  Eventually, I would like to be able
to access files at work, but that will require working through a vpn and
all the security at work.  That is a someday project.

The reason I picked on the term NFS is that I am, by trade a manager of an
AIX support group.  While AIX is a very good unix platform, it doesn't do
too well on an intel platform.  It requires a power pc chipset.  We use nfs
all the time at work. Linux at home, well it is very different, and we be
learning as fast as I can.

Thomas, and all of you, it is wonderful to be able to post a question on
this site, and get an answer the quality of the one I just received. 
Please, don't ever get tired of answering our questions.  It is
appreciated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Phil Scherzinger
pscherz at earthlink.net


> [Original Message]
> From: Thomas Cameron <thomas.cameron at camerontech.com>
> To: <pscherz at earthlink.net>; For users of Fedora Core releases
<fedora-list at redhat.com>
> Date: 10/16/2004 9:19:35 PM
> Subject: Re: Networks,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
>
> On Sat, 2004-10-16 at 20:36 -0500, Phil Scherzinger wrote:
> > I have two computers.  Each wired to a linksys broadband router.  The
> > see and can access the outside world, but I can not telenet or ftp
> > them.  I can ping the ip address that the router (with dhcp) has given
> > them.
> >  
> > What I would like to do is:
> >  
> > 1.  be able to share files between the two boxes, like nfs.
> > 2.  be able to address the boxes by a name rather then a number
> > 3.  make telnet, ftp and ssh work between the two
> > 4.  because the router uses dhcp, can I get the same ip on each box
> > everytime?
> >  
> >  
> > I know this is a big task, but can some one help me get started?  
> >  
> >  
> > Phil Scherzinger
> > pscherz at earthlink.net
>
>
> Wow, Paul.  Not asking much, are you?  :-)
>
> For future reference, please do not post to the list in HTML.  It looks
> like you are using Earthlink's mail.  I don't know how to turn HTML off
> there, but you should really investigate that.
>
> Answers below:
>
> 1)  You said you wanted to "share files between the two boxes, like
> nfs."
>
> To run an NFS server you need at the very least the portmap, nfslock and
> nfs services to run.  To do this, run these commands as root:
>
> chkconfig portmap on
> chkconfig nfslock on
> chkconfig nfs on
>
> After that, you can run the commands:
>
> service portmap restart
> service nfslock restart
> service nfs restart
>
> Now, since you are asking these services to restart and they may or may
> not already be running, you might see some [FAILED] errors when the try
> to shut down.  No worries there, ignore it.
>
> Next, you will need to decide what part of your hard drive to share (in
> the Linux and Unix world, sharing a section of your hard drive is called
> "exporting a filesystem").  For example's sake, I will pretend you've
> decided to export the /home directory.  The file you will want to modify
> is /etc/exports.  It's a plain text file and you can edit it with your
> favorite text editor.  You will add a line that looks something like
> this:
>
> /home *(ro)
>
> This shares the /home directory to everyone (this is really bad security
> but is the most simple setup).  The asterisk (*) is a wildcard meaning
> "everyone."  The (ro) means that the directory is shared read only.
> Please run the command:
>
> man exports
>
> for a better explanation of the format for the /etc/exports file.  
>
> Once you have the exports file set up, you can run the command:
>
> exportfs -a
>
> This will export all the filesystems listed in /etc/exports.  Please
> issue the command:
>
> man exportfs
>
> for more details.
>
> 2)  You said you wanted to be able to "address the boxes by a name
> rather then a number."  There are a number of ways you can do that.  For
> now, since you are new, I will describe what I consider the easiest way
> to do it.
>
> There is a file called /etc/hosts.  It's syntax is like this:
>
> 10.20.30.40  fullname.example.com  alias
>
> The first part is the ip address of the host you are identifying.  The
> second field is the fully qualified domain name (FQDN), also referred to
> as the canonical hostname, of the host.  The third field is the alias or
> short name of the host.
>
> So, if you have two computers called bill.example.com and
> ted.example.com, and bill.example.com has the address 192.168.0.101 and
> ted.example.com has the address 192.168.0.102, then your hosts file
> might have the following two lines in it:
>
> 192.168.0.101  bill.example.com  bill
> 192.168.0.102  ted.example.com  ted
>
> Note that these lines need to be there on both bill's and ted's hosts
> file!  
>
> You will find that the hosts file seems messed up on each of the
> machines when you first open it.  On bill it will probably llok like
> this:
>
> 127.0.0.1  localhost.locadomain localhost bill.example.com bill
>
> It's like that for a reason, but if you are going to assign static
> addresses then you can fix it so it looks like this:
>
> 127.0.0.1  localhost.locadomain  localhost
> 192.168.0.101  bill.example.com  bill
> 192.168.0.102  ted.example.com  ted
>
> Please issue the command:
>
> man hosts
>
> for further details.
>
> 3)  You said you wanted to "make telnet, ftp and ssh work between the
> two."  Well, to do that, you need to make sure that the telnet, ftp and
> ssh servers and clients are installed.
>
> Run this command:
>
> rpm -qa | egrep "telnet|ssh|ftp"
>
> You want to make sure that the following (at least) are installed:
>
> telnet-server
> telnet
> openssh-server
> openssh-clients
> vsftpd
> ftp
>
> Having said that, I strongly recommend that you NOT use telnet - it is
> horribly insecure.  ssh is just as easy to use and it doesn't send your
> password in plain text over the network.  IMHO, telnet is a Bad Thing
> (TM).  I will include the instructions for telnet below in case you
> really really like to be wild and dangerous.
>
> Anyway, once you see that the servers are installed, you will want to do
> this:
>
> chkconfig telnet on
> chkconfig vsftpd on
> chkconfig sshd on
>
> service vsftpd restart
> service sshd restart
>
> You don't need to worry about the telnet daemon - it is handled by
> xinetd and xinetd restarts when one of the services it manages is turned
> on by chkconfig.
>
> So, once that is done, you can test connectivity between each box.  To
> test ftp, issue the command:
>
> ftp bill.example.com
>
> Obviously you will substitute your hostname for bill.example.com.
>
> To test ssh, you will issue the command:
>
> ssh user at bill.example.com
>
> Substitute your user and hostname.
>
> For telnet, you can just issue the command:
>
> telnet bill.example.com
>
> with the appropriate substitutions.
>
> Please issue the following commands:
>
> man vsftd
> man vsftd.conf
> man telnetd
> man telnet
> man sshd
> man sshd_config
> man ssh
>
> for more info on all these services.
>
> 4)  You asked "can I get the same ip on each box everytime?"  Yes, you
> can.  You can do it two ways.  
>
> The first is via static DHCP assignments on your DHCP server (the
> broadband router you have).  Read the instructions that came with it - I
> don't know what you have so I can't help you there.
>
> The second is to not use DHCP for your Linux hosts.  To statically
> assign addresses, issue either the command:
>
> system-config-network
>
> or
>
> netconfig
>
> Since you are new, I recommend you use system-config-network from inside
> your GUI so that you can access the most excellent manual from the Help
> menu.
>
> In either case, you will want to assign your static ip address (like
> 192.168.0.101), your hostname, and so on.  Read the manual for full
> details.
>
> I hope that you've found this information helpful.  In the future, you
> might seriously consider asking one question per post.  I almost deleted
> your post because you asked so much information all at once.  It is more
> likely that someone will see a single question and fire off a quick
> answer than to write the volume that I've written here.
>
> Cheers!
> -- 
> A: Because people read from top to bottom
> Q: Why is top posting bad?
>
> Thomas Cameron, RHCE, CNE, MCSE, MCT