[sf-lug] local area network set up on linux - tutorials, info

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Frantisek Apfelbeck (algoldor at yahoo.com):

> it looks like that I will have finally time to set up a local area
> network at home, however first I would like to do bit of studying so I
> would like to ask for recommendations for tutorials and info files on
> the topic of LAN and related stuff like TCP, Samba etc. - rather wider
> range I need to study quite a bit. 

Well, how about http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz ?

> - I need to connect printer, preferably accessible from all machines
> (Windows one included)

Try to settle on a printer with its own built-in ethernet network
interface.  This really isn't difficult to find, as long as you are
willing to rise above the bottom-dollar offerings, e.g., most inkjet
things.

With a built-in ethernet interface, the printer itself can operate as a
standalone print server.  Typically, such a printer can be trivially
configured to advertise both IPP services for Unix boxes (including
MacOS) and also SMB printing for native-Windows-type printing --
although all Windows versions since Win2k have also been able to do IPP.

> - I would like to share files between the machines

The Windows clients will want to see SMB shares (offered by Samba).
In a just world, you'd be able to make Windows boxes fully participate
in an open-standards world, e.g., by being NFS clients.  However, to
make a long story short, the available add-ons to retrofit NFS-client
and X11 server capabilities to Windows are such a headache that you're
better off not using them if you can avoid the necessity.

Linux and MacOS machines can do native open-standards protocols just
fine (NFS, IPP, lpr, X11, SMTP, IMAP, ssh, etc.), and also can do SMB
stuff in both client and server roles.

> - in the future I would like to have an access to this network from a
> remote computer

You'l have to consider carefully how the gateway into your network
works, to enable such access.  See, most people end up putting a gateway
device on a single public-facing 'real' IP address.  The gateway device
typically does Network Address Translation (NAT) aka IP Masquerading to
permit arbitrary numbers of devices on a private-IP network _behind_ the
gateway device to communicate with the outside world through the
translation services of the gateway host.

In that model, your access from the outside is either directly to the
gateway, or via the gateway through some mechanism to a particular host
on the private network behind it, but you need to work out the details,
and the default is probably going to be either extremely limited access
from outside or none at all.

E.g., canned gateway devices such as 'SOHO routers' typically aren't
designed to support much in the way of such access, if any.


> Well that are things which I would like to be able to do. Please let
> me know where to find nice tutorials, I'm looking around the net by
> myself of course but I wold like to find something nice and I'm sure
> that you know quite plenty classics.

Don't forget the Linux Documentation Project's HOWTOs and Guides.