Three WinXP, One Linux, ICS and file share question

[MCS]

Currently I have three PCs all running Windows XP one of which is my internet gateway. The three machines talk to eachother quite happily and two of them access the net via the gateway PC. If I introduce a fourth PC running Linux, how easy will it be to get it set up on the network so it can share files with the other PCs and also so that it can access the net via the gateway PC? Yes I am a Linux newbie

 

[Techwhore]

The distro's that i've installed have asked me for networking info (i.e. - gateway, subnet, ip) during the install and Mandrake has Drakconf which is a really easy to use, yet powerful, GUI for setting up anything (like control panel in windows). Of course it'd just be a matter of editing a file in any distro though, that file i'm not sure of off hand though.

As for setting up file sharing, again, the install will prompt you but you can do it after the fact by editing smb.conf. Just make sure that your XP machines are using TCP alone (no NetBeui) and you shouldn't have any problems.

 

[hammer01]

Actually as you progress w/ Linux you may find that it will better serve your purposes as a gateway, web server, ftp server, email server , caching proxy server, and file and print sharing server. All of these things come included and the ability to build your own firewall with IP chains (or an easy to use little scripted proggie like PM Firewall) is really an attractive proposition. Good luck and have fun with it.

 

[killumanati]

As a linkux newbie myself I found that Mandrake 8.0 was a good starting place to learn. It has good installations routines that instruct you on how to setup up neworking and the like. Also it has a web based admin utility for administration of the samba server. Samba is used in LINUX for sharing and hosting files with NT PC's. Samba can do pretty much anything a NT PC can.

www.samba.org

Good Luck if you find some good resources let me know

 

[alanwj]

I've used ICS (on Windows 98) to share connection with Linux boxes on several different occasions. I've never really had any trouble with it.

Most of the Linux ditributions ask for all your network information during installation. I've typically just told it to use DHCP, and it got an IP just fine from the ICS gateway. If you've already installed the distribution, you can use the network configuration tools in Gnome or KDE, or you can read the Networking-HOWTO and "man ifconfig" and do it yourself.

As far as sharing files goes, you'll want to use Samba, which comes with most distributions. Redhat (I'm not sure if they all do or not, but I know Redhat) comes with a Service Configuration utility that works in Gnome or KDE that lets you start/stop services (as well as set the to start during boot). The ones you'll want to enable are smb (the actual file server), nmb (takes care of giving your computer a name that will show up in Network Neighborhood), and swat (a web based samba config utility, so you don't have to mess with smb.conf). Alternatively, if you feel like less of a man(woman?) for using graphical config tools, you can set it all up on the command line. The things you'll need to learn about for this is the System V Init procedure and smb.conf.

Good luck.

 

[MCS]

I have the latest distributions of Mandrake and Redhat, haven't decided which one to use yet! I am glad to hear that the network can be setup at the installation stage. Should make things easy.



<< Actually as you progress w/ Linux you may find that it will better serve your purposes as a gateway, web server, ftp server, email server , caching proxy server, and file and print sharing server >>



I thought somebody would say something like that

Thank you all for your help!