A few months ago I installed Linux Mandrake 8.2 on one of my computers. Just yesterday I finally got around to buy Partition Magic so I could put it on my Windows XP box. My question is, how do I set up a LAN network between the two computers? I am a complete Linux noob. I am learning all the basics and have no idea how to do this! Also, I want to set up the network to work if one of the computers is booted in Windows and the other in Linux.

Linux doesn't have a proprietary file sharing mechanism like many other operating systems. To share between *nix boxes something like SSH, FTP, or maybe even HTTP could be used. But, that's not convenient to someone who wants to interact with a Windows system. The *nix interface to Windows networking is called Samba. To get files from the Windows machines you only need a Samba client (smbclient, or a graphical one such as Gnomba). To get files from the *nix machines you'll need to run a Samba daemon on those machines. I haven't actually done this myself, so I can't really help. But, now that you know what to look for, I'm sure you can find a tutorial online.



[edited by - Null and Void on September 14, 2002 8:19:29 PM]

Probably samba is installed by default. Try:
#testparm
If not - install. Don''t know how it is going in RH, may be through rpm?
Edit smb.conf. On my Slack it is in /etc/smb.conf
More less add these lines ( or uncomment )
---------
[pub]
  comment = Public
  path = /home/pub
  force user = me
  broweseable = yes
  force group = mine
  writeable = Yes
  create mask = 0664
  directory mask = 0775
  guest ok = Yes
---------

#kill -1 SMBD_PID
Should be all

Lekha

To share files across two Unix machines you want to use NFS.

Visit http://www.linuxdoc.org there''s plenty of HOWTO''s on how to setup Samba, NFS etc etc...