Re: [ProgSoc] LINUX Networking (TCP/IP)

[Telford Tendys <telford@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au>]

> I have Redhat 5.1 and have tried to use the Network Configurator and the
> Kernel Configurator to get the box onto the ethernet network. But things
> aren't happening.

I tried hard with the old Redhat 4.2 configurator and couldn't get it
to work. Basically they have produced a lot of graphical user interface
which has the brilliant function of making an easy thing very difficult.

Go to the /etc/rc.d directories and throw away redhat's network startup
script, it defines about a thousand shell variables and uses about three
of them but it's a PhD for the man or woman who can locate which three.

Read the HOWTO on networking and on ethernet.
They are getting a bit out of date but still contain some good info.

Read the man pages for route(8) and ifconfig(8),
these two commands should be all you need for a local network configuration.

Also look at /proc/net/route and /proc/net/dev
(just use the cat command to look at these files,
emacs will fail to read files in the /proc tree)

You may also have to put a few machines into /etc/hosts,
usually just yourself and the nearest gateway but sometimes more.
Here is the /etc/hosts from my machine as an example:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
127.0.0.1       localhost
138.25.41.162   triangle.ee.uts.edu.au  triangle
138.25.40.1     ee-gw ee-gw.ee.uts.edu.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Another important file is /etc/resolv.conf, there is a man page
for this -- resolv.conf(5) -- so no excuses for having it badly
setup. Here is the file from my machine, I feel that it is all
pretty obvious. One trick is that sendmail sometimes grabs the
first name from the search path and calls it your local domain.
There are occasional situations where you don't feel like searching
your local domain first and then you have to beat sendmail into
submission by tweaking /etc/sendmail.cf

----------------------------------------------------------------------
search triode.net.au ee.uts.edu.au progsoc.uts.edu.au itd.uts.edu.au
nameserver 138.25.40.30
nameserver 138.25.40.32
----------------------------------------------------------------------

hope that helps!

	- Tel
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