Hello,

As someone already stressed in an earlier post, please accept my apologies if I am asking obvious questions, or impossible/stupid ones!

I am doing my university final project on network programming in Linux. I am aiming to write a client/server Cash-point (ATM) simulation program, using sockets to communicate. For this I have 2 fairly new PC's, with Linux installed on both and 3com 3c905c-tx cards in both. I started off by installing Mandrake Linux 9 on both, and making sure that all 'Server' options/packages were installed on one - in case I needed to make it an official 'server' to make it all work. The two cards are plugged by (tested) cables into a Netgear 4-port Ethernet hub - all the lights show the connectivity is okay.

Mandrake detected my cards perfectly (as it did everything else:)) and I used the Network Configuration Wizard, on both computers, hoping to set up a simple network. *This is it - I don't want or need file-sharing, printer-sharing, internet-connection sharing or anything like that*. Anyway, the wizard asked me to assign IP's (192.168.0.(1 and 2)), subnets (255.255.255.0) and a host-name. This is where I am a bit unsure - I don't have a host! In windows I would set a common workgroup name, and it would work - and only then if I wanted to share files (sorry for the Windows reference, but it is my only experience with networks).

Anyway, I assigned the same host-name to both (gareth-net) and the same DNS address (192.168.0.1). When you come out and (even if you have rebooted) the config window says "Testing connection..." for a while, and then reports "Not connected". Pinging doesn't work either. I'm afraid that's me stuck!

Then I tried to configure one of the PC's as a server, again using the network server wizards - but none of them say "this is a wizard for setting your computer to be a network server". They are either Samba or Internet Connection sharing, or even DNS - but only to add extra DNS entries, not to set the PC to act as a DNS erver.

I then looked at some documentation on the internet, which was about RHL - and thought that I would give them a go - why not eh?! So I installed the (would be) server with RHL 8.0 - and this has even less tools for configuration.

I know that there other ways of doing things besides wizards (in Windows I hate wizards with a passion!) but I'm afraid I don't know much about it. And anyway, anything that I have discearned from the stuff I have looked seems to show you how to do exactly what I was doing with the Mandrake wizard anyway, but from the command line.

Sorry if I have made no sense or annoyed anyone, but I need to get my two computers talking or I'll run out of time on my project!

Thanks for reading, and in advance for any help at all

Gareth Probert

If you are doing socket programming, you should be better than this

What exactly you want to do? Which "server" or "services" is needed for your program to work? There is no univeral server set up in any OS.

Actually, each machine needs a separate identity, so you should have gone
with gareth-net1 with ip 192.168.0.1 for machine1, then gareth-net2 with ip 192.168.0.2 for 2nd machine.
Hope this helps