network setup

[sawer]

I'm ready to setup a network betwteen my linux (mandrake 8.2) and Windows 98. I have a router mfor connecting my internet between the 2 machines. What else do I need and how do I do it? My windows 98 is not setup for networking either. I will also need help on settting up my printer thru the network. The printer is on the windows machine.
Thanks sawer

[Rui Alves]

you really need to use a router? you cannot get one extra network card for your mandrake box? I ask because I'm on a network like that: one mandrake 8.2 box connected to the internet and sharing the connection with a win98 machine. I use two cards on the linux box one conected to my ADSL modem and the other card is connected to the other computer. I used mandrake's control panel to setup the internet connection and that is very very easy (you just go through a wizard). If you're really stuck with the router I have no idea how to get that working as I have never tried that before.

Regarding the printer I installed samba and the file sharing part has been working very nice. The printer sharing part has not been peaceful. I connected the printer to my linux machine and I got to see the network printer on win98. I could even configure the printer on 98 but I was never able to print anything (on linux printing locally was ok). So my next step is to connect the printer to win98 and share it with linux, like you. so please tell me something if you successed on doing this... anyway I think it should be a lot easier to share the printer if the printer is connected to linux... only I couldn't do that...

ok, hope this helps even if it's just bit.

Rui Alves
php-db.com (http://php-db.com)

[cowanrl]

Sawer,

The answers to those few simple questions you asked could take books to answer. As far as Linux networking is concerned, The Linux Documentation Project is a good place to start. It's at http://www.tldp.org. They have a section called the HOW-TOs. The index for the HOW-TOs is at:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/index.html

Scroll down through that and you''ll see a Networking section. Under Protcols, there is an Ethernet HOW-to at:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Ethernet-HOWTO.html

If you read through all of that, you should have a good idea of what you need to do. If you have the manuals that come with Mandrake, either printed or on-line versions, there may be some help there too. From what Rui Alves said, Mandrake has some good wizards to help you.

If you're new to networking, some background reading will definitely help you ask more specific questions on this forum.
It may also help you do more reliable searches on this forum. I'm sure many of your questions will have been asked and answered before.

[cowanrl]

Rui Alves,

Since you already have your printer working on Linux, you obviously know how to set printers up. Here's what I do to allow my Windows machines to print to the Linux printers I share out with Samba.
When I create the printer on Linux, I don't select a printer driver. I just select Raw Print Queue as the queue type. The default printer settings in Samba will share out all printers so Samba is usually not a problem. When you connect to the printer shared out via Samba, just connect to the one that is the Raw Print Queue. Samba and Linux do not process the print job at all. The print job is configured by the printer driver on the Windows machine, sent to Samba which sends it to Linux which sends it to the printer unchanged. It works for me everytime.

The Raw Print Queue won't work properly for printing from the Linux machines so I usually create 2 separate printers. One to be used from Linux and one from Windows. The Linux one will use the proper driver for Linux. I usually give them slightly different descriptive names so I can tell them apart.

Hope this helps.

[Rui Alves]

Thanks for the tip cowanrl. I will try this and post the results in here later.

[Rui Alves]

yep, just right! Thanks for the tip.