General network

[MrMille]

hi guys,

I've an XP box, a Vista box, and an Ubuntu box.

What's the best way to network these yokes?

[14049752]

What's the best way to network these yokes?

For what purpose?

For file/printer sharing, just install Samba on the Ubuntu machine, configure it, then configure the two windows machines as you normally would.

For anything else, you'll have to be more specific.

[JRDtechnet]

You might need this for your XP machine
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922120

[MrMille]

That's the thing, I have these three machines,
but I don't know what to do with them.

Any suggestions for getting more utility out of all three together?

[seedubya]

In general, networking is done for specific purposes including but not limited to;
- centralised data storage and sharing
- centralised data backup
- provision of an email server with associated backups
- printer sharing
- internet connection sharing
- data security (access rights etc.)
- provision of an intranet
- application sharing e.g. web-server based

Which of these (or any others) do you need to do? A lot of the roles above can be done on a standard OS but should be done on a server OS. You have that option immediately open to you with your linux box.

[MrMille]

In general, networking is done for specific purposes including but not limited to;

- centralised data storage and sharing
- centralised data backup
- provision of an email server with associated backups
- printer sharing
- internet connection sharing
- data security (access rights etc.)
- provision of an intranet
- application sharing e.g. web-server based


Which of these (or any others) do you need to do? A lot of the roles above can be done on a standard OS but should be done on a server OS. You have that option immediately open to you with your linux box.

I would like to do 1 and 2,
where do I begin?

[Bullfighter]

Reason #9 - we are geeks and it's cool to hook up stuff on a network :-)

[MrMille]

buy that man a cigar!

[seedubya]

Reason #9 - we are geeks and it's cool to hook up stuff on a network :-)

LOL!!

As far a what you should do going forward

1 - decide on a machine for your server (suggest the linux system)
2 - decide on an OS for your server (suggest http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=05198)

That OS will do everything you want and more in one box. Worth a look. They've just released a new version about a week ago.

[MrMille]

Got them sitting beside me,
a Vostro Vista box from Dell, and an oul litter tray running a sempron

[seedubya]

the litter tray will do grand for SME Server. It'll only be serving files and backing them up. Make sure you have a gigabit switch and cards in your pcs if you're going to be moving big files around. I'd suggest backing the server up to external USB if possible.

[MrMille]

Can I not just plug them into the 4 port BT Voyager 2100?

[seedubya]

Of course you can, but a gig switch would be faster.