[PLUG] Newbie Elementary Networking Questions ABAIG

[Douglas Lentz <dlentz@dca.net>]

...As Basic As It Gets.

I could use some help in getting started. I haven't done any networking 
- my background is database and general business programming.

I'm trying to network two linux boxes. The goal is to be able to ping 
BoxA from Box1 and vice versa. Once I get that, I think I can take it 
from there.

Setup: two computers (call them Box1 and BoxA), both running Red Hat 
Linux 9. Box1 is a "bare bones" Celeron box, 256 meg RAM, nothing 
unusual except that everything, including the ethernet card, is on the 
motherboard.  ($219.99 at Microcenter. I am forced to operate in economy 
mode these days.) The NIC is a SIS 900/7016CI, so says 
redhat-config-network. When this box boots, it tries and fails to bring 
up eth0, which is not surprising - it's not plugged into anything. This 
box knows its name (which is "innsmouth").

BoxA is an old Packard Bell P200. It has an ethernet card, I don't know 
what kind right now (Can I root around in /proc and find this? Where? 
The old Windows installation is still intact, on a separate drive. If I 
have to I can plug the old drive in and see what Device Manager says). I 
assume it works - I used to have a DSL modem plugged into it, that 
worked and the card's green light is on. BoxA has 64 meg RAM and due to 
this constraint, I am NOT running X on the box. We used SCO 5.0x at my 
last job and so I am used to using bash and virtual terminals. I did the 
Red Hat installation in text mode on this box. When this box boots, it 
knows not eth0; nothing re eth0 appears on the bootup screen. ifconfig 
-a  only knows about the loopback interface. This box calls itself 
"localhost". First question, where did eth0 go? Did I fail to include 
networking in the installation? Do I have to do a complete reinstall?

I have a crossover cable running between the boxes. (It's clearly 
labeled "crossover"). I don't know whether it's cat3 or 5. According to 
"The Linux Network" I don't need a hub if all I have are two boxes. (TLN 
also says "and we'll show you how to do it" but it never does). My copy 
of TLN is about four years old and very slackware specific. It may be 
confusing me more than anything else.

If I can get eth0 up on BoxA...I notice that Box1 is trying to get IP 
info via DHCP. I doubt that's right, if there's a DHCP server around my 
house I sure didn't put it there. After I get eth0 up, I presume that I 
have to assign static IP addresses to the boxes. Does it matter which 
ones I choose, or can I pick two more or less at random? Am I right to 
use the Class C netmask 255.255.255.0? My connection to the internet out 
there is PPP dialup (interface ppp0)  and my ISP assigns me a different 
IP address each time I dial in. Any potential conflicts here?

All advice will be appreciated. Thanks a lot.




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