Re: A minimalist network

[Andy Smith]

Hi Richard,

On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 07:41:56AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> As I had said in last paragraph of
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/08/msg00609.html :
> "Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on my
> desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when ethernet
> connection is live?"

If you ever have a need to administer the Linux machine while not being
in front of it then you will probably find this easiest over ssh.
Yes, you could argue that you do not need the encryption features of
ssh since the data only goes over this short cable inside your home,
but really, ssh is so ubiquitous that it's probably not worth using
any different solution.

If remote (and remote may include things like, over wifi from
another room in your house) administration is never going to be
something you do, as you'll be doing all work from the physical
keyboard of the machine, then maybe ssh is something you don't need
to run. Running ssh also allows file transfer with scp or sftp.

>From what I can tell you haven't actually got IP connectivity going
yet though, so perhaps talk of ssh is premature. Perhaps get
networking working before you consider which networking applications
you're going to install.

Cheers,
Andy

-- 
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

"The electric guitar - like making love - is much improved by a little
 feedback, completely ruined by too much." — The League Against Tedium

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/19/2016 7:42 PM, Mike McClain wrote:

Don't know if this will help but...


It will. Perhaps not in the way you would expect. Early in this 
thread I asked "What questions should I be asking?" Your post 
provides guidelines to creating for myself those questions. I 
hope that makes sense.



I have a 2 box network, Wheezy and Win2K, cable connected and able to
access directories on the Win2K box from Debian.


I have a set of Wheezy DVD's so I can avoid one possible source 
of ambiguity.



Never needed to go the other way.


I don't see that I currently have a need to go the other way.


The Linux box is named playground, the Win2K box South40.
There is a router between them but it's not necessary (belt).


Pedagogically I'd prefer {belt OR suspenders} to {belt AND 
suspenders}.



[snip details of set up]


Thank you.

Re: A minimalist network

[Mike McClain]

Don't know if this will help but...
I have a 2 box network, Wheezy and Win2K, cable connected and able to
access directories on the Win2K box from Debian.
Never needed to go the other way.
The Linux box is named playground, the Win2K box South40.
There is a router between them but it's not necessary (belt).

On the Linux side:
These packages installed:
cifs-utils
libfilesys-smbclient-perl
libsmbclient
samba-common
samba-common-bin
smbclient

/etc/hosts has these entries.
192.168.1.1 router
192.168.1.2 playground  play
192.168.1.3 south40 s40

/etc/hostname contains:
playground

/etc/network/interfaces has these lines:
# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth1
iface eth1 inet static
address 192.168.1.2
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255

/etc/fstab has these entries:
//south40/H$/docs /south40/docs cifs 
noauto,rw,user,credentials=/home/mike/smb.psswd,uid=1000,file_mode=0755,dir_mode=0755,nounix,noserverino
   0 0
//south40/I$/MP3s /south40/MP3s cifs 
noauto,rw,user,credentials=/home/mike/smb.psswd,uid=1000,file_mode=0755,dir_mode=0755,nounix,noserverino
   0 0
#   docs & MP3s on different partitions

/home/mike/smb.psswd has 600 permissions and contains:
username=Win2K_user
password=Win2K_password

I have a small iptables firewall that must allow traffic to/from Win2K.

To access the Win2K files:
root@/deb73:/> mount /south40/docs

On the Win2K side:
StartMenu/ControlPanel/System/NetworkID/Properties:
Computer Name = south40
Member of workgroup = WORKGROUP
StartMenu/ControlPanel/System/NetworkID/NetworkID:  launches wizard
Home use, Users must enter user name and password
StartMenu/Control Panel/Internet Options/Internet Properties/Security/Local 
Intranet/Sites/Advanced/:
192.168.1.1
192.168.1.2
StartMenu/Settings/Network and Dial-up Connections/Local Area Connection  
right click
Properties check:
Client for Microsoft Networks
File and Printer sharing
Internet Protocol(TCP/IP)
select Internet Protocol(TCP/IP)/Properties:
Use the following IP address:
IP Addr:192.168.1.3
Subnet mask:255.255.255.0
Default Gateway:192.168.1.2
Use the following DNS server addresses:
Prefered DSN:   208.67.222.222
Alternate:  208.67.220.220
select Advanced/WINS/Enable NETBIOS over TCP/IP

create C:\shared & shared it (only used with smbclient to pass files back & 
forth).

C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc\hosts: 192.168.1.2playground


HTH,
Mike
--
Seven deadly sins:
Anger, gluttony, envy, sloth, avarice, lust and pride.
I practice most of these so guess I'll die one day.

Re: A minimalist network

[Brian]

On Fri 19 Aug 2016 at 12:32:54 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

> On 8/19/2016 9:56 AM, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> >On Friday 19 August 2016 14:59:12 Richard Owlett wrote:
> >>On 8/19/2016 8:51 AM, Brian wrote:
> >>>On Fri 19 Aug 2016 at 07:41:56 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 8/18/2016 9:04 AM, Brian wrote:
> >On Thu 18 Aug 2016 at 08:58:23 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> >>On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> >>>On 08/17/2016 07:45 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.
> [snip]
> >>>
> >>>It would help if you provided more information about your network and
> >>>computers:
> >>>
> >>>1.  Laptop make, model, and version, CPU make and model, RAM size,
> >>>HDD/SSD size, and Ethernet speed of Windows laptop.
> >>>
> >>>2.  Experimental laptop and key parameters (as above).
> >>>
> >>>3.  Internet modem or gateway.
> >>>
> >>>4.  Router and/or routing software.
> >>>
> >>>5.  Any other devices we should know about.
> >>>
> >>>6.  Distances between devices.
> >>
> >>1. ThinkPad T43 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd012235]
> >>2. ThinkPad R61 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd013965]
> >>3. N/A
> >
> >You presumably have a modem/router already. The Debian machine doesn't
> >have to use it as gateway to the internet. Set up routing for it to
> >send packets to the local network only.
> 
> As I had said in last paragraph of
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/08/msg00609.html :
> "Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on my
> desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when ethernet
> connection is live?"
> >>>
> >>>The technique I outlined is exactly that; no more and no less. Neither
> >>>machine would be connected to the internet; they would communicate only
> >>>with each other.
> >>>
> >>>It would be an interesting project to undertake as part of the Education
> >>>in Retirement program; especially if it was done wirelessly, with or
> >>>without the router being involved.
> >>
> >>As I replied to Thomas a few minutes ago:
> >>The exhaustive all inclusive description of *MY* network is "A
> >>Lenovo T43 running WinXP Pro SP3 connected by a short Ethernet
> >>cable to a Lenovo R61 running experimental configurations of
> >>Debian Jessie (Mate desktop)."
> >
> >You asked for advice, but seem only interested in informing.  If you already
> >know everything there is to know about YOUR network, why are you asking us
> >anything??
> 
> I was emphasizing the topology. As stated previously the physical layer
> works. I expect that after reading _Networking for Dummies_ I'll be a lot
> closer to having machines communicate.

What does "physical layer works" mean? (That's a real question, not
a come on). Lights appear?

BTW, you seem singularly disinterested in any alternatives to your
programmed set of thought. Not that your idea is bad but it can be
realised in other ways and acknowledging them (which you implicitly
have) is all to the good. Stick with your short ethernet cable; it's
as good a method for file transfer as any other.

Somebody said that education amd retirement go together. Make the
most of it.







> 
> >
> >And what *precisely* do you mean by an Ethernet cable??
> 
> 3ft Cat6 with attached connectors.
> 
> 
> >
> >Lisi
> >
> >
> 

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/19/2016 10:46 AM, Miles Fidelman wrote:

Richard,

On 8/19/16 10:08 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:



NO 
I physically have two other machines on my desk which could
serve nicely to connect to the internet. Connecting either of

->them to<- missing words

the T43 or R61 has NEVER been considered ;)



Perhaps a stupid question, but you describe


"The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie
installed. Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have
multiple installs in a day. It intentionally has *NO* internet
connectivity. It has a small partition set aside for
preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts."


It seems to me that it's awfully cumbersome doing "multiple
installs in a day" without a network connection.   Sure, you can
burn a minimal system to a live-CD or DVD, but as soon as you
want anything more (say some of those tools for experimenting
with networking), you need to pull stuff from a repository, or it
gets VERY cumbersome.

So... how are you doing all of those installs?


From COMPLETE sets of purchased DVD's. I started out with only a 
dialup connection. I now have T-Mobile's smallest data plan. Some 
of my key decisions were made on aesthetic more than technical 
considerations.

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/19/2016 9:42 AM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

[snip]


So one of Richard's two has to be connected., AT LEAST FOR SOME OF THE
TIME.  ;-)

Lisi


NO 
I physically have two other machines on my desk which I could
serve nicely to connect to the internet. Connecting either of the
T43 or R61 ha NEVER been considered ;)


OK.  I misunderstood.  I thought you were saying that you only had those two
machines, but you don't seem actually to have said it.  Mea culpa.  So you
connect to teh internet how and when?  You imply here that oyu odn't use
either of thsoe other two machines.  At the local library?  (I am not being
facetious - that is definitely possible.)  But you have got an ISP.  ISTR you
settled on what I think (and I may have it wrong) you (plural) call a limited
cell-phone connection.  (I don't understand all the terminology, but I think
you settled on a limited connection of the same type as what we call 4G and
3G.)


Are conflating several of my projects.

A little over a year ago I was investigating how to replace my 
dialup connection which was being terminated by my then ISP. My 
current ISP is now T-Mobile as I purchase one of their Z915's 
described as "4G LTE Hotspot". I've disabled the "WiFi Hotspot" 
feature and use it essentially as a modem.


This thread is a side issue to a project about configuring Debian 
Jessie "My Way". To support the multiple re-installations of 
Debian I have been creating preseed.cfg and various scripts on my 
WinXP machine. Those files would be written to a flash drive 
which would then be used on the next iteration of my Debian 
install. I got tired of sneakernet and decided to connect the two 
laptops with 36" of Cat6 cable.




People keep presuming me to be normal and/or typical. Relatives
gave up that idea eons ago.


Whatever gives you the idea that anyone presumes anything of the sort?  And
what, pray, on this list, is "normal and typical"???  ;-)


GRIN!



Lisi

Re: A minimalist network

[David Wright]

On Fri 19 Aug 2016 at 08:42:51 (-0500), Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 8/19/2016 8:05 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> >On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 07:41:56AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> >
> >[...]
> >
> >>As I had said in last paragraph of
> >>https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/08/msg00609.html :
> >>"Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on my
> >>desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when ethernet
> >>connection is live?"
> >
> >Because your newest IOT lightbulb[1] or other gadget[2] is spying on
> >you?
> >
> >Of course you may have reasons to "go simple", especially on setup,
> >and/or under controlled conditions; especially if you're connecting
> >the two boxes via one cable as has been sugested in this (monster)
> >thread several times, you're entitled to be somewhat secure.
> >
> >But dividing the world in "insecure outside, secure inside, and at
> >the perimeter, the firewall takes care of things" is a pretty
> >outdated way of thinking. Better use secure protocols inside your
> >network. You never know what your network printer is doing, there
> >beneath the desk.
> >
> >[1] <https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/40397.html>
> >[2] 
> ><https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/08/18/2231244/smart-electrical-socket-leaks-your-email-address-can-launch-ddos-attacks>
> >
> >Regards
> 
> *ROFL* 
> My subject line is "A minimalist network" !
> The exhaustive all inclusive description of *MY* network is "A
> Lenovo T43 running WinXP Pro SP3 connected by a short Ethernet cable
> to a Lenovo R61 running experimental configurations of Debian Jessie
> (Mate desktop)." ;]!

This is a very long thread on a very short cable between two machines.
There are an unknown number of people who might read this thread to
achieve similar ends, but their situation might differ in some detail.
For example, their 'direct' connection might pass through the power
cabling in a shared rental, where a person downstairs could be
nefariously monitoring all the traffic.

When it comes to troubleshooting a problem, the specific, individual
circumstances are often essential for a fix. OTOH when it comes to
advising on a topic, it usually helps to be much more general and
inclusive, to help the most people.

[So, OP, this bears repetition:]
You frequently write in your posts something along the lines of "Off
to do homework" or "I've got some reading to do". So I would have
thought you would understand people's motives in writing for a larger
audience than just yourself, and for more than ephemeral usefulness.
The list isn't a free personal consulting service; the posts remain
permanently on the web site and other archives for anyone to search.

Cheers,
David.

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/19/2016 9:56 AM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Friday 19 August 2016 14:59:12 Richard Owlett wrote:

On 8/19/2016 8:51 AM, Brian wrote:

On Fri 19 Aug 2016 at 07:41:56 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 8/18/2016 9:04 AM, Brian wrote:

On Thu 18 Aug 2016 at 08:58:23 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:

On 08/17/2016 07:45 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.
[snip]


It would help if you provided more information about your network and
computers:

1.  Laptop make, model, and version, CPU make and model, RAM size,
HDD/SSD size, and Ethernet speed of Windows laptop.

2.  Experimental laptop and key parameters (as above).

3.  Internet modem or gateway.

4.  Router and/or routing software.

5.  Any other devices we should know about.

6.  Distances between devices.


1. ThinkPad T43 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd012235]
2. ThinkPad R61 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd013965]
3. N/A


You presumably have a modem/router already. The Debian machine doesn't
have to use it as gateway to the internet. Set up routing for it to
send packets to the local network only.


As I had said in last paragraph of
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/08/msg00609.html :
"Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on my
desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when ethernet
connection is live?"


The technique I outlined is exactly that; no more and no less. Neither
machine would be connected to the internet; they would communicate only
with each other.

It would be an interesting project to undertake as part of the Education
in Retirement program; especially if it was done wirelessly, with or
without the router being involved.


As I replied to Thomas a few minutes ago:
The exhaustive all inclusive description of *MY* network is "A
Lenovo T43 running WinXP Pro SP3 connected by a short Ethernet
cable to a Lenovo R61 running experimental configurations of
Debian Jessie (Mate desktop)."


You asked for advice, but seem only interested in informing.  If you already
know everything there is to know about YOUR network, why are you asking us
anything??


I was emphasizing the topology. As stated previously the physical 
layer works. I expect that after reading _Networking for Dummies_ 
I'll be a lot closer to having machines communicate.




And what *precisely* do you mean by an Ethernet cable??


3ft Cat6 with attached connectors.




Lisi

Re: A minimalist network

[Joe]

On Fri, 19 Aug 2016 06:53:22 -0500
Richard Owlett  wrote:

> On 8/17/2016 6:13 PM, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> > On Wednesday 17 August 2016 22:14:24 Richard Owlett wrote:  
> >> Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on
> >> my desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when
> >> ethernet connection is live?  
> >
> > You need to use something to move the files form one machine to
> > another, as has been said.
> >
> > Now that this list has kindly helped me learn how, I use ssh all
> > the time on my small home network; but I must admit I use it more
> > for admin than for moving files, though I also use it for moving
> > files. 
> 
> I hadn't looked up ssh, I *thought* I knew what it was for. I 
> didn't ;/
> 
> 

It often comes in handy when a Linux computer stops responding to the
keyboard, it's something else to try before the Big Red Switch.

For a Windows machine, PuTTY is generally the ssh client of choice,
though there are others. For file transfer, WinSCP works with ssh,
FileZilla does also but I've never used it for that. PuTTY does
command-line file transfer, watch the \s and /s, I think XP is old
enough to pretend not to understand the /.

-- 
Joe

Re: A minimalist network

[Miles Fidelman]

Richard,

On 8/19/16 10:08 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:



NO 
I physically have two other machines on my desk which I could serve 
nicely to connect to the internet. Connecting either of the T43 or R61 
ha NEVER been considered ;)




Perhaps a stupid question, but you describe

"The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie 
installed. Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have multiple 
installs in a day. It intentionally has *NO* internet connectivity. It 
has a small partition set aside for preseed.cfg and miscellaneous 
scripts."


It seems to me that it's awfully cumbersome doing "multiple installs in 
a day" without a network connection.   Sure, you can burn a minimal 
system to a live-CD or DVD, but as soon as you want anything more (say 
some of those tools for experimenting with networking), you need to pull 
stuff from a repository, or it gets VERY cumbersome.


So... how are you doing all of those installs?

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: A minimalist network

[Lisi Reisz]

On Friday 19 August 2016 14:59:12 Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 8/19/2016 8:51 AM, Brian wrote:
> > On Fri 19 Aug 2016 at 07:41:56 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> >> On 8/18/2016 9:04 AM, Brian wrote:
> >>> On Thu 18 Aug 2016 at 08:58:23 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
>  On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> > On 08/17/2016 07:45 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> >> I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.
> >> [snip]
> >
> > It would help if you provided more information about your network and
> > computers:
> >
> > 1.  Laptop make, model, and version, CPU make and model, RAM size,
> > HDD/SSD size, and Ethernet speed of Windows laptop.
> >
> > 2.  Experimental laptop and key parameters (as above).
> >
> > 3.  Internet modem or gateway.
> >
> > 4.  Router and/or routing software.
> >
> > 5.  Any other devices we should know about.
> >
> > 6.  Distances between devices.
> 
>  1. ThinkPad T43 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd012235]
>  2. ThinkPad R61 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd013965]
>  3. N/A
> >>>
> >>> You presumably have a modem/router already. The Debian machine doesn't
> >>> have to use it as gateway to the internet. Set up routing for it to
> >>> send packets to the local network only.
> >>
> >> As I had said in last paragraph of
> >> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/08/msg00609.html :
> >> "Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on my
> >> desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when ethernet
> >> connection is live?"
> >
> > The technique I outlined is exactly that; no more and no less. Neither
> > machine would be connected to the internet; they would communicate only
> > with each other.
> >
> > It would be an interesting project to undertake as part of the Education
> > in Retirement program; especially if it was done wirelessly, with or
> > without the router being involved.
>
> As I replied to Thomas a few minutes ago:
> The exhaustive all inclusive description of *MY* network is "A
> Lenovo T43 running WinXP Pro SP3 connected by a short Ethernet
> cable to a Lenovo R61 running experimental configurations of
> Debian Jessie (Mate desktop)."

You asked for advice, but seem only interested in informing.  If you already 
know everything there is to know about YOUR network, why are you asking us 
anything??

And what *precisely* do you mean by an Ethernet cable??

Lisi

Re: A minimalist network

[Lisi Reisz]

On Friday 19 August 2016 15:08:03 Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 8/19/2016 8:54 AM, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> > On Friday 19 August 2016 13:55:39 Richard Owlett wrote:
> >> On 8/18/2016 4:13 PM, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> >>> On Thursday 18 August 2016 20:46:14 Charlie Kravetz wrote:
>  -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
>  Hash: SHA256
> 
>  On Thu, 18 Aug 2016 11:50:23 -0700
> 
>  David Christensen  wrote:
> > On 08/18/2016 06:58 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> >> On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> >>> 3.  Internet modem or gateway.
> >>
> >> 3. N/A
> >
> > So, the laptops are not connected to the Internet?  How do you access
> > the Internet to post and read this list, download Debian ISO's, etc.?
> >
> >
> > David
> 
>  Why do they have to be connected to the Internet? I have four
>  computers here. Three are not connected, one is.
> >>>
> >>> So one of Richard's two has to be connected.
> >>
> >> Not really ;)
> >> As I had said in last paragraph of
> >> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/08/msg00609.html :
> >> "Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on
> >> my desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when
> >> ethernet connection is live?"
> >>
> >> The sole purpose of the Ethernet connection is to avoid
> >> sneakernet when transferring small preseed.cfg and script files
> >> from the WinXP machine to my Debian experiment.
> >
> > Correction - or rather, expansion to include what was clearly inferred.
> > ;-)
> >
> > So one of Richard's two has to be connected., AT LEAST FOR SOME OF THE
> > TIME.  ;-)
> >
> > Lisi
>
> NO 
> I physically have two other machines on my desk which I could
> serve nicely to connect to the internet. Connecting either of the
> T43 or R61 ha NEVER been considered ;)

OK.  I misunderstood.  I thought you were saying that you only had those two 
machines, but you don't seem actually to have said it.  Mea culpa.  So you 
connect to teh internet how and when?  You imply here that oyu odn't use 
either of thsoe other two machines.  At the local library?  (I am not being 
facetious - that is definitely possible.)  But you have got an ISP.  ISTR you 
settled on what I think (and I may have it wrong) you (plural) call a limited 
cell-phone connection.  (I don't understand all the terminology, but I think 
you settled on a limited connection of the same type as what we call 4G and 
3G.) 
>
> People keep presuming me to be normal and/or typical. Relatives
> gave up that idea eons ago.

Whatever gives you the idea that anyone presumes anything of the sort?  And 
what, pray, on this list, is "normal and typical"???  ;-)

Lisi

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/19/2016 8:54 AM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Friday 19 August 2016 13:55:39 Richard Owlett wrote:

On 8/18/2016 4:13 PM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Thursday 18 August 2016 20:46:14 Charlie Kravetz wrote:

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

On Thu, 18 Aug 2016 11:50:23 -0700

David Christensen  wrote:

On 08/18/2016 06:58 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:

3.  Internet modem or gateway.


3. N/A


So, the laptops are not connected to the Internet?  How do you access
the Internet to post and read this list, download Debian ISO's, etc.?


David


Why do they have to be connected to the Internet? I have four computers
here. Three are not connected, one is.


So one of Richard's two has to be connected.


Not really ;)
As I had said in last paragraph of
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/08/msg00609.html :
"Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on
my desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when
ethernet connection is live?"

The sole purpose of the Ethernet connection is to avoid
sneakernet when transferring small preseed.cfg and script files
from the WinXP machine to my Debian experiment.


Correction - or rather, expansion to include what was clearly inferred. ;-)

So one of Richard's two has to be connected., AT LEAST FOR SOME OF THE
TIME.  ;-)

Lisi



NO 
I physically have two other machines on my desk which I could 
serve nicely to connect to the internet. Connecting either of the 
T43 or R61 ha NEVER been considered ;)


People keep presuming me to be normal and/or typical. Relatives 
gave up that idea eons ago.

Re: A minimalist network

[Lisi Reisz]

On Friday 19 August 2016 13:55:39 Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 8/18/2016 4:13 PM, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> > On Thursday 18 August 2016 20:46:14 Charlie Kravetz wrote:
> >> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> >> Hash: SHA256
> >>
> >> On Thu, 18 Aug 2016 11:50:23 -0700
> >>
> >> David Christensen  wrote:
> >>> On 08/18/2016 06:58 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
>  On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> > 3.  Internet modem or gateway.
> 
>  3. N/A
> >>>
> >>> So, the laptops are not connected to the Internet?  How do you access
> >>> the Internet to post and read this list, download Debian ISO's, etc.?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> David
> >>
> >> Why do they have to be connected to the Internet? I have four computers
> >> here. Three are not connected, one is.
> >
> > So one of Richard's two has to be connected.
>
> Not really ;)
> As I had said in last paragraph of
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/08/msg00609.html :
> "Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on
> my desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when
> ethernet connection is live?"
>
> The sole purpose of the Ethernet connection is to avoid
> sneakernet when transferring small preseed.cfg and script files
> from the WinXP machine to my Debian experiment.

Correction - or rather, expansion to include what was clearly inferred. ;-)

So one of Richard's two has to be connected., AT LEAST FOR SOME OF THE 
TIME.  ;-)

Lisi

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/19/2016 8:51 AM, Brian wrote:

On Fri 19 Aug 2016 at 07:41:56 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:


On 8/18/2016 9:04 AM, Brian wrote:

On Thu 18 Aug 2016 at 08:58:23 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:


On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:

On 08/17/2016 07:45 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.
[snip]


It would help if you provided more information about your network and
computers:

1.  Laptop make, model, and version, CPU make and model, RAM size,
HDD/SSD size, and Ethernet speed of Windows laptop.

2.  Experimental laptop and key parameters (as above).

3.  Internet modem or gateway.

4.  Router and/or routing software.

5.  Any other devices we should know about.

6.  Distances between devices.




1. ThinkPad T43 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd012235]
2. ThinkPad R61 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd013965]
3. N/A


You presumably have a modem/router already. The Debian machine doesn't
have to use it as gateway to the internet. Set up routing for it to send
packets to the local network only.


As I had said in last paragraph of
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/08/msg00609.html :
"Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on my desk
and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when ethernet connection is
live?"


The technique I outlined is exactly that; no more and no less. Neither
machine would be connected to the internet; they would communicate only
with each other.

It would be an interesting project to undertake as part of the Education
in Retirement program; especially if it was done wirelessly, with or
without the router being involved.



As I replied to Thomas a few minutes ago:
The exhaustive all inclusive description of *MY* network is "A 
Lenovo T43 running WinXP Pro SP3 connected by a short Ethernet 
cable to a Lenovo R61 running experimental configurations of 
Debian Jessie (Mate desktop)."

Re: A minimalist network

[Brian]

On Fri 19 Aug 2016 at 07:41:56 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

> On 8/18/2016 9:04 AM, Brian wrote:
> >On Thu 18 Aug 2016 at 08:58:23 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> >
> >>On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> >>>On 08/17/2016 07:45 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.
> [snip]
> >>>
> >>>It would help if you provided more information about your network and
> >>>computers:
> >>>
> >>>1.  Laptop make, model, and version, CPU make and model, RAM size,
> >>>HDD/SSD size, and Ethernet speed of Windows laptop.
> >>>
> >>>2.  Experimental laptop and key parameters (as above).
> >>>
> >>>3.  Internet modem or gateway.
> >>>
> >>>4.  Router and/or routing software.
> >>>
> >>>5.  Any other devices we should know about.
> >>>
> >>>6.  Distances between devices.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>1. ThinkPad T43 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd012235]
> >>2. ThinkPad R61 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd013965]
> >>3. N/A
> >
> >You presumably have a modem/router already. The Debian machine doesn't
> >have to use it as gateway to the internet. Set up routing for it to send
> >packets to the local network only.
> 
> As I had said in last paragraph of
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/08/msg00609.html :
> "Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on my desk
> and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when ethernet connection is
> live?"

The technique I outlined is exactly that; no more and no less. Neither
machine would be connected to the internet; they would communicate only
with each other.

It would be an interesting project to undertake as part of the Education
in Retirement program; especially if it was done wirelessly, with or
without the router being involved.

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/19/2016 8:05 AM, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 07:41:56AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

[...]


As I had said in last paragraph of
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/08/msg00609.html :
"Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on my
desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when ethernet
connection is live?"


Because your newest IOT lightbulb[1] or other gadget[2] is spying on
you?

Of course you may have reasons to "go simple", especially on setup,
and/or under controlled conditions; especially if you're connecting
the two boxes via one cable as has been sugested in this (monster)
thread several times, you're entitled to be somewhat secure.

But dividing the world in "insecure outside, secure inside, and at
the perimeter, the firewall takes care of things" is a pretty
outdated way of thinking. Better use secure protocols inside your
network. You never know what your network printer is doing, there
beneath the desk.

[1] <https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/40397.html>
[2] 
<https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/08/18/2231244/smart-electrical-socket-leaks-your-email-address-can-launch-ddos-attacks>

Regards


*ROFL* 
My subject line is "A minimalist network" !
The exhaustive all inclusive description of *MY* network is "A 
Lenovo T43 running WinXP Pro SP3 connected by a short Ethernet 
cable to a Lenovo R61 running experimental configurations of 
Debian Jessie (Mate desktop)." ;]!

Re: A minimalist network

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 07:41:56AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

[...]

> As I had said in last paragraph of
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/08/msg00609.html :
> "Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on my
> desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when ethernet
> connection is live?"

Because your newest IOT lightbulb[1] or other gadget[2] is spying on
you?

Of course you may have reasons to "go simple", especially on setup,
and/or under controlled conditions; especially if you're connecting
the two boxes via one cable as has been sugested in this (monster)
thread several times, you're entitled to be somewhat secure.

But dividing the world in "insecure outside, secure inside, and at
the perimeter, the firewall takes care of things" is a pretty
outdated way of thinking. Better use secure protocols inside your
network. You never know what your network printer is doing, there
beneath the desk.

[1] 
[2] 


Regards
- -- t
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=gd2p
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Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/18/2016 4:13 PM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Thursday 18 August 2016 20:46:14 Charlie Kravetz wrote:

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

On Thu, 18 Aug 2016 11:50:23 -0700

David Christensen  wrote:

On 08/18/2016 06:58 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:

3.  Internet modem or gateway.


3. N/A


So, the laptops are not connected to the Internet?  How do you access
the Internet to post and read this list, download Debian ISO's, etc.?


David


Why do they have to be connected to the Internet? I have four computers
here. Three are not connected, one is.


So one of Richard's two has to be connected.



Not really ;)
As I had said in last paragraph of 
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/08/msg00609.html :
"Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on 
my desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when 
ethernet connection is live?"


The sole purpose of the Ethernet connection is to avoid 
sneakernet when transferring small preseed.cfg and script files 
from the WinXP machine to my Debian experiment.

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/18/2016 9:04 AM, Brian wrote:

On Thu 18 Aug 2016 at 08:58:23 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:


On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:

On 08/17/2016 07:45 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.
[snip]


It would help if you provided more information about your network and
computers:

1.  Laptop make, model, and version, CPU make and model, RAM size,
HDD/SSD size, and Ethernet speed of Windows laptop.

2.  Experimental laptop and key parameters (as above).

3.  Internet modem or gateway.

4.  Router and/or routing software.

5.  Any other devices we should know about.

6.  Distances between devices.




1. ThinkPad T43 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd012235]
2. ThinkPad R61 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd013965]
3. N/A


You presumably have a modem/router already. The Debian machine doesn't
have to use it as gateway to the internet. Set up routing for it to send
packets to the local network only.


As I had said in last paragraph of 
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/08/msg00609.html :
"Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on 
my desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when 
ethernet connection is live?"

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/18/2016 5:33 AM, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi Richard,

On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 05:27:13PM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

The WinXP machine no longer reported a disconnected cable.
The Jessie Mate machine now reported it was attempting to establish a
connection.

IOW both machines recognized a PHYSICAL connection.
*NOTHING MORE*



From what I can gather of the thread, both of your machines have

gigabit interfaces. That's good as it means the Auto-MDIX feature is
virtually guaranteed be supported¹. So, you need not worry whether
your cable is crossover or not.

All you need to do now is statically configure both machines to be
in the same IP network. It does not really matter what numbers you
choose as long as they are valid, but convention dictates that you
should use one of the private networks as listed in RFC1918:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_network

[snip]


That led to multiple relevant Wikipedia links which combined with
_Networking+for+Dummies_ should give me framework.

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/17/2016 6:13 PM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Wednesday 17 August 2016 22:14:24 Richard Owlett wrote:

Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on
my desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when
ethernet connection is live?


You need to use something to move the files form one machine to another, as
has been said.

Now that this list has kindly helped me learn how, I use ssh all the time on
my small home network; but I must admit I use it more for admin than for
moving files, though I also use it for moving files.



I hadn't looked up ssh, I *thought* I knew what it was for. I 
didn't ;/

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/18/2016 9:46 AM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Thursday 18 August 2016 13:04:39 Richard Owlett wrote:

On 8/17/2016 4:26 PM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Wednesday 17 August 2016 21:48:20 Richard Owlett wrote:

[snip]
The web hits I got for zeroconf indicated it's part of a support
package for KDE, I'm using Mate. Don't know if that's a problem.
http://manpages.debian.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi is still giving a 404
error so I can't check there. Didn't find any link at kde.org
that looked promising.


Try one of these:
http://mate-desktop.com/community/

They are a helpful enthusiastic lot.

Lisi


In a brief visit didn't find what I was looking for.


Perhaps the mailing list??


That would be my preference.
Went to list of groups at http://ml.mate-desktop.org/listinfo/ .
Saw they were all described as developer list I clicked on link 
to archives of

mate-devmailing list for MATE development
It appeared to be most general. I receive repeated "403 
Forbidden" errors.





*BUT* searching their wiki for "networking" led to a Arch Linux
page which listed the key modules for Mate. That will allow me to
install a leaner Jessie. Will get a chance to experiment with
that this afternoon. Thanks.


Good!!


My first try didn't work. Haven't spent any diagnostic time on it 
yet.




Lisi

RE: A minimalist network

[Bonno Bloksma]

Hi,


>> Back in the "good ole days" there used to be a minimum segment / cable 
>> length for an Ethernet cable--I don't recall to what all it 
>> applied--i.e., I don't recall if it applied to thick Ethernet, thin 
[...]
>> Does that apply for Gigabit Ethernet?
> 
> Sort of, but not directly.
> 
> Ethernet and fast-ethernet have minimum cable lengths specified.  There
> is no minimum cable length specified for gigabit ethernet (1000BASE-T).
> 
> For gigabit ethernet, what matters is that none of the crosstalk parameters
> are exceeded.  So, any length of cable *as long as it certifies as CAT5e/6/6A*
> will work for gigabit ethernet.
> 
> In practice, you'll find good CAT6 1m patch cables readly available, I've
> never seen anyone bother selling anything shorter than that, but YMMV.

For switch to switch connections I use Cat6 0,5m cables a lot, that is just 
under 2ft.

Bonno Bloksma

Re: A minimalist network

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 06:23:35PM -0700, David Christensen wrote:
> I'd recommend a residential router with WiFi, Gigabit ports, and full
> support for purpose-built FOSS firewall distributions, such as:
> 
> http://dd-wrt.com/site/index

Whilst useful, that's a long way from "minimalist" in my book, and significantly
more complicated than a single Cat 5e cable connecting the two computers 
(assuming
at least one of the NICs can handle auto MDI-X)


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: A minimalist network

[Brian]

On Thu 18 Aug 2016 at 13:46:14 -0600, Charlie Kravetz wrote:

> On Thu, 18 Aug 2016 11:50:23 -0700
> David Christensen  wrote:
> 
> >On 08/18/2016 06:58 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> >> On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:  
> >>> 3.  Internet modem or gateway.  
> >> 3. N/A  
> >
> >So, the laptops are not connected to the Internet?  How do you access
> >the Internet to post and read this list, download Debian ISO's, etc.?
> >
> >David
> >
> 
> Why do they have to be connected to the Internet? I have four computers
> here. Three are not connected, one is. 

They do not have to be. That wasn't the point of the question.

When the OP was asked about having an internet modem or gateway he
responded "N/A". On behalf of the OP you could perhaps explain what
that means when he obviously has a means of accessing the internet.

Re: A minimalist network

[Lisi Reisz]

On Thursday 18 August 2016 20:46:14 Charlie Kravetz wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA256
>
> On Thu, 18 Aug 2016 11:50:23 -0700
>
> David Christensen  wrote:
> >On 08/18/2016 06:58 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> >> On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> >>> 3.  Internet modem or gateway.
> >>
> >> 3. N/A
> >
> >So, the laptops are not connected to the Internet?  How do you access
> >the Internet to post and read this list, download Debian ISO's, etc.?
> >
> >
> >David
>
> Why do they have to be connected to the Internet? I have four computers
> here. Three are not connected, one is.

So one of Richard's two has to be connected.

Lisi

Re: A minimalist network

[Charlie Kravetz]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

On Thu, 18 Aug 2016 11:50:23 -0700
David Christensen  wrote:

>On 08/18/2016 06:58 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
>> On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:  
>>> 3.  Internet modem or gateway.  
>> 3. N/A  
>
>So, the laptops are not connected to the Internet?  How do you access
>the Internet to post and read this list, download Debian ISO's, etc.?
>
>
>David
>

Why do they have to be connected to the Internet? I have four computers
here. Three are not connected, one is. 

- -- 
Charlie Kravetz
Linux Registered User Number 425914
[http://linuxcounter.net/user/425914.html]
Never let anyone steal your DREAM.   [http://keepingdreams.com]
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Re: A minimalist network

[David Wright]

On Thu 18 Aug 2016 at 10:33:28 (+), Andy Smith wrote:
> Hi Richard,
> 
> On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 05:27:13PM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> > The WinXP machine no longer reported a disconnected cable.
> > The Jessie Mate machine now reported it was attempting to establish a
> > connection.
> > 
> > IOW both machines recognized a PHYSICAL connection.
> > *NOTHING MORE*
> 
> >From what I can gather of the thread, both of your machines have
> gigabit interfaces. That's good as it means the Auto-MDIX feature is
> virtually guaranteed be supported¹. So, you need not worry whether
> your cable is crossover or not.
> 
> All you need to do now is statically configure both machines to be
> in the same IP network. It does not really matter what numbers you
> choose as long as they are valid, but convention dictates that you
> should use one of the private networks as listed in RFC1918:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_network
> 
> As you are only going to have two machines on this network you could
> a /30. In fact given there won't be a default gateway host you could
> probably get away with a /31. But there is no need to make life
> confusing: you can just use a /24, so your network has use of all of
> the last octet of the address, e.g. 192.168.1.*.
> 
> So, let's say you did choose 192.168.1.0/24. Just configure one
> machine as 192.168.1.1 and the other as 192.168.1.2 with a netmask
> on both of 255.255.255.0. If either of them insists on needing a
> default gateway you can just put the IP of the other machine there.

Before I discovered the simplicity of using IPv6, I used IPv4.
I just dug out a backup of a configuration file from that time,
/etc/network/interfaces

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.19
netmask 255.255.255.255
pointopoint 192.168.1.15

#

The other end had its 19 and 15 switched, naturally.

Cheers,
David.

Re: A minimalist network

[David Wright]

On Thu 18 Aug 2016 at 11:50:23 (-0700), David Christensen wrote:
> On 08/18/2016 06:58 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> > On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> >> 3.  Internet modem or gateway.
> > 3. N/A
> 
> So, the laptops are not connected to the Internet?  How do you access
> the Internet to post and read this list, download Debian ISO's, etc.?

and

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2015/06/msg00909.html

Cheers,
David.

Re: A minimalist network

[David Wright]

On Thu 18 Aug 2016 at 11:50:23 (-0700), David Christensen wrote:
> On 08/18/2016 06:58 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> > On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> >> 3.  Internet modem or gateway.
> > 3. N/A
> 
> So, the laptops are not connected to the Internet?  How do you access
> the Internet to post and read this list, download Debian ISO's, etc.?

Keep up, there at the back! :)

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2015/09/msg00930.html

Cheers,
David.

Re: A minimalist network

[David Christensen]

On 08/18/2016 06:58 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:
>> 3.  Internet modem or gateway.
> 3. N/A

So, the laptops are not connected to the Internet?  How do you access
the Internet to post and read this list, download Debian ISO's, etc.?


David

Re: A minimalist network

[Pascal Hambourg]

Le 18/08/2016 à 19:18, Reco a écrit :


OP is seeking to connect exactly 2 PCs. Both SLAAC and DHCP are
overkill in such case IMO.


I won't argue.


I don't see what's so inconvenient in ipv6
link-local for such simplistic setup.


IPv6 link local addresses are harder to remember, and you must append 
the interface name to them (see D. Wright's reply), assuming that the 
application supports this notation.

Re: A minimalist network

[Brian]

On Thu 18 Aug 2016 at 20:18:56 +0300, Reco wrote:

> On Thu, 18 Aug 2016 12:51:08 +0200
> Pascal Hambourg  wrote:
> 
> > SLAAC (stateless address autoconfiguration) requires a properly 
> > configured IPv6 router sending RA's (router advertisements). Debian 
> > running radvd can do this.
> > 
> > Or do you mean link local addresses (fe80::/10) ? They're not the most 
> > convenient for everyday use.
> 
> OP is seeking to connect exactly 2 PCs. Both SLAAC and DHCP are
> overkill in such case IMO. I don't see what's so inconvenient in ipv6
> link-local for such simplistic setup.

To remind ourselves:

  I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet

He has internet connectivity. Stick both machines into the router. Set
them up with addresses and routing. Verify they can communicate. Neither
machine need be capable of connecting with the outside world.

Re: A minimalist network

[Reco]

Hi.

On Thu, 18 Aug 2016 12:51:08 +0200
Pascal Hambourg  wrote:

> SLAAC (stateless address autoconfiguration) requires a properly 
> configured IPv6 router sending RA's (router advertisements). Debian 
> running radvd can do this.
> 
> Or do you mean link local addresses (fe80::/10) ? They're not the most 
> convenient for everyday use.

OP is seeking to connect exactly 2 PCs. Both SLAAC and DHCP are
overkill in such case IMO. I don't see what's so inconvenient in ipv6
link-local for such simplistic setup.

Reco

Re: A minimalist network

[David Wright]

On Thu 18 Aug 2016 at 12:51:08 (+0200), Pascal Hambourg wrote:
> Le 18/08/2016 à 01:26, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh a écrit :
> >
> >Too bad it is WinXP, otherwise you'd have instant connectivity via IPv6
> >SLAAC.
> 
> Windows XP supports IPv6. It is just disabled by default, so you
> need to enable it with something like "ipv6 enable". Even Windows
> 2000 could have experimental basic IPv6 support.
> 
> SLAAC (stateless address autoconfiguration) requires a properly
> configured IPv6 router sending RA's (router advertisements). Debian
> running radvd can do this.
> 
> Or do you mean link local addresses (fe80::/10) ? They're not the
> most convenient for everyday use.

The latter is certainly what I meant earlier. I find it very
convenient, just by using an alias and function (which I deliberately
avoid below). Here's the networking on my laptop as normally
configured wirelessly (with uname -a; /sbin/ifconfig -a;
ip route show; ip neigh show) and then when I connect to a
host with cat5 cable, and back again. (I edited out the lo
interface for brevity):

--
Laptop connected normally by wireless:
Linux west 3.16.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt25-2+deb8u3 (2016-07-02) 
i686 GNU/Linux

eth0  Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1c:23:3b:9f:34  
  UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
  RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
  TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
  collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
  RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
  Interrupt:18 

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1c:bf:d5:28:76  
  inet addr:192.168.1.15  Bcast:192.168.1.255
  Mask:255.255.255.0
  inet6 addr: fe80::21c:bfff:fed5:2876/64 Scope:Link
  UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
  RX packets:284407 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
  TX packets:147975 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
  collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
  RX bytes:430082452 (410.1 MiB)  TX bytes:13065473 (12.4 MiB)

default via 192.168.1.1 dev wlan0 
192.168.1.0/24 dev wlan0  proto kernel  scope link  src 192.168.1.15 

192.168.1.19 dev wlan0 lladdr 00:13:72:83:0e:66 REACHABLE
192.168.1.1 dev wlan0 lladdr 44:94:fc:39:1f:ce REACHABLE

--
Remove 192.168.1.19's ethernet cable from wall and plug into laptop:
Linux west 3.16.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt25-2+deb8u3 (2016-07-02) 
i686 GNU/Linux

eth0  Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1c:23:3b:9f:34  
  inet6 addr: fe80::21c:23ff:fe3b:9f34/64 Scope:Link
  UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
  RX packets:47 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
  TX packets:48 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
  collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
  RX bytes:10259 (10.0 KiB)  TX bytes:10392 (10.1 KiB)
  Interrupt:18 

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1c:bf:d5:28:76  
  inet addr:192.168.1.15  Bcast:192.168.1.255
  Mask:255.255.255.0
  inet6 addr: fe80::21c:bfff:fed5:2876/64 Scope:Link
  UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
  RX packets:322207 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
  TX packets:166891 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
  collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
  RX bytes:486912567 (464.3 MiB)  TX bytes:14726418 (14.0 MiB)

default via 192.168.1.1 dev wlan0 
192.168.1.0/24 dev wlan0  proto kernel  scope link  src 192.168.1.15 

fe80::213:72ff:fe83:e66 dev eth0 lladdr 00:13:72:83:0e:66 REACHABLE
192.168.1.19 dev wlan0 lladdr 00:13:72:83:0e:66 STALE
192.168.1.1 dev wlan0 lladdr 44:94:fc:39:1f:ce REACHABLE

--
Log in to 192.168.1.19:
$ ssh -X fe80::213:72ff:fe83:e66%eth0
Linux alum 3.2.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.2.81-1 i686
[...]
You have new mail.
Last login: Thu Aug 18 10:08:12 2016 from west
$ 

--
Transfer file from 192.168.1.19 back to the laptop:
$ scp -p a_file david@[fe80::21c:23ff:fe3b:9f34%eth0]:/tmp/
a_file 100% 1280KB   1.3MB/s   00:01
$ 

--
Log out of 192.168.1.19:
$ [typed ^D]
Connection to fe80::213:72ff:fe83:e66%eth0 closed.
$ 

--
Transfer a file from laptop to 192.168.1.19:
$ scp -p a_file david@[fe80::213:72ff:fe83:e66%eth0]:/tmp/
a_file 100% 1280KB   1.3MB/s   00:01
$ 
--

Reconnect 192.168.1.19 to the wall socket:
Linux west 3.16.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt25-2+deb8u3 (2016-07-02) 
i686 GNU/Linux

eth0  Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1c:23:3b:9f:34  
  inet6 addr: fe80::21c:23ff:fe3b:9f34/64 Scope:Link
  UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
  RX packets:1385 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
  TX packets:1495 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
  collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
  RX bytes:1457798 (1.3 MiB)  TX bytes:1464872 (1.3 MiB)
  Interrupt:18 

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1c:bf:d5:28:76  
  inet 

Re: A minimalist network

[Joe]

On Thu, 18 Aug 2016 11:04:16 -0500
David Wright  wrote:


> 
> In days of yore, there was a minimum distance on coax because
> every transmission was effectively a broadcast, and had to pass a
> certain distance (≡time) before any reply would be recognised *as a
> reply* rather than the transmitter hearing itself transmitting.

I doubt that was it. A metre of coax will have a delay of 10-20ns,
which was the blink of an eye to hardware of that era. Collisions would
have been detected by abnormal levels, which is why termination of the
cable was such a big deal. Coax-based Ethernet was basically analogue
video technology. Except for, as you say, the damn' stupid 50 Ohms...

-- 
Joe

Re: A minimalist network

[David Wright]

On Thu 18 Aug 2016 at 11:07:28 (-0400), rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, August 18, 2016 09:58:23 AM Richard Owlett wrote:
> > On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> > > On 08/17/2016 07:45 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
> > > 6.  Distances between devices.
> 
> ...
> 
> > 6. < 1 ft.
> 
> Because I learned one thing here already (Gigabit ethernet usually doesn't 
> require crossover cables), I'll see if I can learn something else ;-)
> 
> Back in the "good ole days" there used to be a minimum segment / cable length 
> for an Ethernet cable--I don't recall to what all it applied--i.e., I don't 
> recall if it applied to thick Ethernet, thin (coax) Ethernet, Cat 5 and Cat 
> 6, 
> all of the above or just some of the above.  I always used a minimum of 6' 
> and 
> that worked for me.
> 
> Does that apply for Gigabit Ethernet?

6 feet is sensible. This may be why modems and routers come with
6-foot cables, the cheapest guaranteed to work. Shorter could give
problems with cheap devices.

But there's no harm in the devices themselves being closer,
eg stacked, as long as the ventilation works and you don't have our
sort of weather (often >100°F outside).

In days of yore, there was a minimum distance on coax because
every transmission was effectively a broadcast, and had to pass a
certain distance (≡time) before any reply would be recognised *as a
reply* rather than the transmitter hearing itself transmitting.
And if you had a problem, everyone on that segment would share it too.
They say half a metre, but we were not allowed anything less than
one metre. And 50Ω, not 75Ω TV cable!

Cheers,
David.

Re: A minimalist network

[Tim McDonough]

On 8/18/2016 10:07 AM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
Because I learned one thing here already (Gigabit ethernet usually 
doesn't

require crossover cables), I'll see if I can learn something else ;-)

Back in the "good ole days" there used to be a minimum segment / cable length
for an Ethernet cable--I don't recall to what all it applied--i.e., I don't
recall if it applied to thick Ethernet, thin (coax) Ethernet, Cat 5 and Cat 6,
all of the above or just some of the above.  I always used a minimum of 6' and
that worked for me.

Does that apply for Gigabit Ethernet?


I believe that only applied to the older 10Base2 (thinnet) type networks 
that used coaxial cables instead of twisted pair wiring. I do not recall 
the minimum length either.


Tim

Re: A minimalist network

[Lisi Reisz]

On Thursday 18 August 2016 16:07:28 rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> Back in the "good ole days" there used to be a minimum segment / cable
> length for an Ethernet cable--I don't recall to what all it applied--i.e.,
> I don't recall if it applied to thick Ethernet, thin (coax) Ethernet, Cat 5
> and Cat 6, all of the above or just some of the above.  I always used a
> minimum of 6' and that worked for me.

I have frequently used shorter ones.  I think that the shortest I have ever 
actually used was 30 cm. (12") (Cat 5 and Cat 5e.)  So far I have never had 
occasion to use a short Cat6 patch cable.

Lisi

Re: A minimalist network

[Lisi Reisz]

On Thursday 18 August 2016 14:58:23 Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> > On 08/17/2016 07:45 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> >> I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.
> >>
> >> The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie installed.
> >> Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have multiple installs in a
> >> day. It intentionally has *NO* internet connectivity. It has a small
> >> partition set aside for preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.
> >>
> >> The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as source of
> >> preseed and script files.
> >>
> >> My internet searches turn up too much outdated information and/or fine
> >> detail. Most link assume a server with multiple clients. Better
> >> description would be a peer to peer setup. It may be convenient to have
> >> the Windows machine act as a terminal for the Debian machine.
> >
> > It would help if you provided more information about your network and
> > computers:
> >
> > 1.  Laptop make, model, and version, CPU make and model, RAM size,
> > HDD/SSD size, and Ethernet speed of Windows laptop.
> >
> > 2.  Experimental laptop and key parameters (as above).
> >
> > 3.  Internet modem or gateway.
> >
> > 4.  Router and/or routing software.
> >
> > 5.  Any other devices we should know about.
> >
> > 6.  Distances between devices.
>
> 1. ThinkPad T43 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd012235]
> 2. ThinkPad R61 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd013965]
> 3. N/A
> 4. TBD
> 5. none
> 6. < 1 ft.

Are you not on the Internet at all?  I thought that your Windows computer did 
have a *limited* connection, at which rate you must have a modem of some 
kind, albeit possibly internal.

Lisi

Re: A minimalist network

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Thu, 18 Aug 2016, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> Back in the "good ole days" there used to be a minimum segment / cable length 
> for an Ethernet cable--I don't recall to what all it applied--i.e., I don't 
> recall if it applied to thick Ethernet, thin (coax) Ethernet, Cat 5 and Cat 
> 6, 
> all of the above or just some of the above.  I always used a minimum of 6' 
> and 
> that worked for me.
> 
> Does that apply for Gigabit Ethernet?

Sort of, but not directly.

Ethernet and fast-ethernet have minimum cable lengths specified.  There
is no minimum cable length specified for gigabit ethernet (1000BASE-T).

For gigabit ethernet, what matters is that none of the crosstalk
parameters are exceeded.  So, any length of cable *as long as it
certifies as CAT5e/6/6A* will work for gigabit ethernet.

In practice, you'll find good CAT6 1m patch cables readly available,
I've never seen anyone bother selling anything shorter than that, but
YMMV.

-- 
  Henrique Holschuh

Re: A minimalist network

[rhkramer]

On Thursday, August 18, 2016 09:58:23 AM Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> > On 08/17/2016 07:45 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

> > 6.  Distances between devices.

...

> 6. < 1 ft.

Because I learned one thing here already (Gigabit ethernet usually doesn't 
require crossover cables), I'll see if I can learn something else ;-)

Back in the "good ole days" there used to be a minimum segment / cable length 
for an Ethernet cable--I don't recall to what all it applied--i.e., I don't 
recall if it applied to thick Ethernet, thin (coax) Ethernet, Cat 5 and Cat 6, 
all of the above or just some of the above.  I always used a minimum of 6' and 
that worked for me.

Does that apply for Gigabit Ethernet?

Re: A minimalist network

[Lisi Reisz]

On Thursday 18 August 2016 13:04:39 Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 8/17/2016 4:26 PM, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> > On Wednesday 17 August 2016 21:48:20 Richard Owlett wrote:
> >> [snip]
> >> The web hits I got for zeroconf indicated it's part of a support
> >> package for KDE, I'm using Mate. Don't know if that's a problem.
> >> http://manpages.debian.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi is still giving a 404
> >> error so I can't check there. Didn't find any link at kde.org
> >> that looked promising.
> >
> > Try one of these:
> > http://mate-desktop.com/community/
> >
> > They are a helpful enthusiastic lot.
> >
> > Lisi
>
> In a brief visit didn't find what I was looking for.

Perhaps the mailing list??

> *BUT* searching their wiki for "networking" led to a Arch Linux
> page which listed the key modules for Mate. That will allow me to
> install a leaner Jessie. Will get a chance to experiment with
> that this afternoon. Thanks.

Good!!

Lisi

Re: A minimalist network

[Brian]

On Thu 18 Aug 2016 at 08:58:23 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

> On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> >On 08/17/2016 07:45 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> >>I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.
> >>
> >>The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie installed.
> >>Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have multiple installs in a
> >>day. It intentionally has *NO* internet connectivity. It has a small
> >>partition set aside for preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.
> >>
> >>The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as source of
> >>preseed and script files.
> >>
> >>My internet searches turn up too much outdated information and/or fine
> >>detail. Most link assume a server with multiple clients. Better
> >>description would be a peer to peer setup. It may be convenient to have
> >>the Windows machine act as a terminal for the Debian machine.
> >
> >It would help if you provided more information about your network and
> >computers:
> >
> >1.  Laptop make, model, and version, CPU make and model, RAM size,
> >HDD/SSD size, and Ethernet speed of Windows laptop.
> >
> >2.  Experimental laptop and key parameters (as above).
> >
> >3.  Internet modem or gateway.
> >
> >4.  Router and/or routing software.
> >
> >5.  Any other devices we should know about.
> >
> >6.  Distances between devices.
> >
> >
> 
> 1. ThinkPad T43 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd012235]
> 2. ThinkPad R61 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd013965]
> 3. N/A

You presumably have a modem/router already. The Debian machine doesn't
have to use it as gateway to the internet. Set up routing for it to send
packets to the local network only.

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/17/2016 8:07 PM, David Christensen wrote:

On 08/17/2016 07:45 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:

I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.

The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie installed.
Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have multiple installs in a
day. It intentionally has *NO* internet connectivity. It has a small
partition set aside for preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.

The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as source of
preseed and script files.

My internet searches turn up too much outdated information and/or fine
detail. Most link assume a server with multiple clients. Better
description would be a peer to peer setup. It may be convenient to have
the Windows machine act as a terminal for the Debian machine.


It would help if you provided more information about your network and
computers:

1.  Laptop make, model, and version, CPU make and model, RAM size,
HDD/SSD size, and Ethernet speed of Windows laptop.

2.  Experimental laptop and key parameters (as above).

3.  Internet modem or gateway.

4.  Router and/or routing software.

5.  Any other devices we should know about.

6.  Distances between devices.




1. ThinkPad T43 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd012235]
2. ThinkPad R61 [https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd013965]
3. N/A
4. TBD
5. none
6. < 1 ft.

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/17/2016 8:52 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:

On 08/17/2016 03:27 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:

I am groping for the questions I *SHOULD BE* asking ;/

Q:  How does Ethernet work?

Q:  How do TCP/IP local area networks work?

Q:  How does the Internet work?



https://www.amazon.com/Networking-Dummies-Doug-Lowe/dp/B01FBEEOBU/ref=sr_1_2?s=books=UTF8=1471484996=1-2=networking+for+dummies


That looks like a good starting point. Put in a request for a 
copy with local library.





or, for the real nitty gritty,

https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Networks-5th-Andrew-Tanenbaum/dp/0132126958


It spends too much space on internet. SeaMonkey is more than 
sufficient for me.

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/17/2016 4:26 PM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Wednesday 17 August 2016 21:48:20 Richard Owlett wrote:

[snip]
The web hits I got for zeroconf indicated it's part of a support
package for KDE, I'm using Mate. Don't know if that's a problem.
http://manpages.debian.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi is still giving a 404
error so I can't check there. Didn't find any link at kde.org
that looked promising.


Try one of these:
http://mate-desktop.com/community/

They are a helpful enthusiastic lot.

Lisi


In a brief visit didn't find what I was looking for.
*BUT* searching their wiki for "networking" led to a Arch Linux 
page which listed the key modules for Mate. That will allow me to 
install a leaner Jessie. Will get a chance to experiment with 
that this afternoon. Thanks.

Re: A minimalist network

[Pascal Hambourg]

Le 18/08/2016 à 01:26, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh a écrit :


Too bad it is WinXP, otherwise you'd have instant connectivity via IPv6
SLAAC.


Windows XP supports IPv6. It is just disabled by default, so you need to 
enable it with something like "ipv6 enable". Even Windows 2000 could 
have experimental basic IPv6 support.


SLAAC (stateless address autoconfiguration) requires a properly 
configured IPv6 router sending RA's (router advertisements). Debian 
running radvd can do this.


Or do you mean link local addresses (fe80::/10) ? They're not the most 
convenient for everyday use.

Re: A minimalist network

[Andy Smith]

Hi Richard,

On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 05:27:13PM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> The WinXP machine no longer reported a disconnected cable.
> The Jessie Mate machine now reported it was attempting to establish a
> connection.
> 
> IOW both machines recognized a PHYSICAL connection.
> *NOTHING MORE*

>From what I can gather of the thread, both of your machines have
gigabit interfaces. That's good as it means the Auto-MDIX feature is
virtually guaranteed be supported¹. So, you need not worry whether
your cable is crossover or not.

All you need to do now is statically configure both machines to be
in the same IP network. It does not really matter what numbers you
choose as long as they are valid, but convention dictates that you
should use one of the private networks as listed in RFC1918:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_network

As you are only going to have two machines on this network you could
a /30. In fact given there won't be a default gateway host you could
probably get away with a /31. But there is no need to make life
confusing: you can just use a /24, so your network has use of all of
the last octet of the address, e.g. 192.168.1.*.

So, let's say you did choose 192.168.1.0/24. Just configure one
machine as 192.168.1.1 and the other as 192.168.1.2 with a netmask
on both of 255.255.255.0. If either of them insists on needing a
default gateway you can just put the IP of the other machine there.

Your Debian machine is probably saying that it's "attempting to
establish a connection" because it has detected that you've plugged
in an Ethernet cable that has carrier (has the electrical properties
of a working Ethernet network), and is now trying to automatically
configure that interface with DHCP.

That's most likely going to fail because you don't have a DHCP
server on your "network"—unless you *did* happen to have a DHCP
server running on one of those two machines.

Since this setup is very limited and isn't going to change, I would
just statically configure the network on both machines. Setting up a
DHCP server would be just one more thing to learn.

Once your network is working you can use the same tools that you use
over the internet to transfer files over your local network. So,
things like scp, sftp and so on. If your purpose in direct
connection is to have a secure link that needs no encryption and
you're satisfied that it needs no encryption², then you could get
faster transfers with tools like netcat.

Cheers,
Andy

¹ Auto-MDIX is OPTIONAL in the 1000Base-T standard so it is possible
  that some gigabit NIC would not support it, but I have never seen
  one that doesn't, even really cheap ones.

² A lot of times just because you have a private link between
  machines still wouldn't make it safe to ignore encryption, because
  if the cable goes somewhere where you don't have 24/7 vision then
  it's trivial for someone to attach something that passively sniffs
  it. But, it sounds like this is a setup in the home where that is
  perhaps too paranoid.

Cheers,
Andy

-- 
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

Re: A minimalist network

[Miles Fidelman]

On 08/17/2016 03:27 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:

I am groping for the questions I *SHOULD BE* asking ;/

Q:  How does Ethernet work?

Q:  How do TCP/IP local area networks work?

Q:  How does the Internet work?



https://www.amazon.com/Networking-Dummies-Doug-Lowe/dp/B01FBEEOBU/ref=sr_1_2?s=books=UTF8=1471484996=1-2=networking+for+dummies

or, for the real nitty gritty,

https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Networks-5th-Andrew-Tanenbaum/dp/0132126958




--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: A minimalist network

[David Christensen]

On 08/17/2016 03:27 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> I am groping for the questions I *SHOULD BE* asking ;/

Q:  How does Ethernet work?

Q:  How do TCP/IP local area networks work?

Q:  How does the Internet work?


David

Re: A minimalist network

[David Christensen]

On 08/17/2016 02:14 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> I did purchase an "8-Port Gigabit Switch". I don't intend open the
> shrink wrap unless convinced there is no other way. As I've said
> elsewhere a major motivation is educational.

I'd recommend a residential router with WiFi, Gigabit ports, and full
support for purpose-built FOSS firewall distributions, such as:

http://dd-wrt.com/site/index


> Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on my desk
> and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when ethernet connection
> is live?

1.  You can ssh from one machine to the other (if both have sshd service).

2.  You will want the Internet connection to be live while the computers
are connected to the local area network (LAN).


David

Re: A minimalist network

[David Christensen]

On 08/17/2016 07:45 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.
> 
> The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie installed.
> Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have multiple installs in a
> day. It intentionally has *NO* internet connectivity. It has a small
> partition set aside for preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.
> 
> The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as source of
> preseed and script files.
> 
> My internet searches turn up too much outdated information and/or fine
> detail. Most link assume a server with multiple clients. Better
> description would be a peer to peer setup. It may be convenient to have
> the Windows machine act as a terminal for the Debian machine.

It would help if you provided more information about your network and
computers:

1.  Laptop make, model, and version, CPU make and model, RAM size,
HDD/SSD size, and Ethernet speed of Windows laptop.

2.  Experimental laptop and key parameters (as above).

3.  Internet modem or gateway.

4.  Router and/or routing software.

5.  Any other devices we should know about.

6.  Distances between devices.


David

Re: A minimalist network

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Thu, 18 Aug 2016, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> Now that this list has kindly helped me learn how, I use ssh all the time on 
> my small home network; but I must admit I use it more for admin than for 
> moving files, though I also use it for moving files.

Same here, but the crypto required by ssh/scp and rsync (over ssh) will
be murder on the T43's Pentium-M processor, and *slow it down* very
noticeably.

I should know, I've been doing a *lot* of Debian work in a T43/p for the
best side of a decade...

-- 
  Henrique Holschuh

Re: A minimalist network

[Miles Fidelman]

On 8/17/16 6:46 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 8/17/2016 4:34 PM, Brian wrote:

On Wed 17 Aug 2016 at 09:45:39 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:


I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.

The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie 
installed.
Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have multiple installs 
in a day.
It intentionally has *NO* internet connectivity. It has a small 
partition

set aside for preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.

The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as source of 
preseed

and script files.


What is your present technique for getting files from the second machine
to the first one?


Write files a USB flash drive in format readable to other machine.
That is a nuisance!


Hence the recommendation of turning on the WinXP FTP server!

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: A minimalist network

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Wed, 17 Aug 2016, Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 8/17/2016 10:09 AM, Darac Marjal wrote:
> >>The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie
> >>installed. Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have
> >>multiple installs in a day. It intentionally has *NO* internet
> >>connectivity. It has a small partition set aside for
> >>preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.
> >>
> >>The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as
> >>source of preseed and script files.

Too bad it is WinXP, otherwise you'd have instant connectivity via IPv6
SLAAC.

> >If you're connecting the two machines with a single cable, then
> >either the cable needs to be a "cross-over" ethernet cable, or

Gigabit ethernet uses all wires on both directions at the same time
(well, at least 1000BASE-T does) using quite advanced line coding and
echo cancelation to get away with it.  It doesn't need (or want), a
cross-over cable.

A straight CAT-5e, CAT-6 or CAT-6A patch cable will do (assuming the
cable is *good*, and not bargain-bin defective junk that would never
pass certification).

> >one or other other the devices needs to support "Auto-MDI/MDIX".
> >Support for that was patchy in 10M/100M devices but it mich more
> >common in Gigabit Ethernet devices.
> 
> I'm using Lenovos - a T43 and a R61, each with Gigabit interface.

The T43 can't do 1 Gbit/s easily due to the relatively slow Pentium-M
processor, but should be able to do 400~600 Mbit/s (using Linux, anyway.
No idea about WinXP).

That T43 will be able to go twice as fast (maybe even saturate the
gigabit ethernet link) on larger transfers if you kick the MTU up to
9000 bytes on *both* devices (Debian and WinXP), but this is more
advanced stuff I suggest you leave for later.

> >Once you've got the physical layer sorted (that is, green blinky
> >lights on both machines), then the rest of the configuration
> >should be much the same as any network:
> >* Either give the hosts unique, static IPs OR
> >   Run a DHCP server on one of the machines
> >* Either refer to the hosts by IP address OR
> >   Run a DNS server on one of the machines OR
> >   Write the hostnames in /etc/hosts
> >(%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on windows)
> 
> Ahh the question is HOW 
> Bought Cat6 straight thru cable. Neither machine has a light to blink, but
> both reacted indicating cable present - but no communication established
> YET.

You could install isc-dhcp-server on the Debian side, and configure it
to serve dynamic IPs.  The WinXP side will ask for an IPv4 address and
get it from the Debian box.  But that's going to be annoying unless you
do the extra step of anchoring the WinXP IP by configuring its MAC
address in the isc-dhcp-server config file.

It would be easier to use static IPs in both sides.  The how-tos for
Windows XP will be accurate enough for that.  Use, e.g., 192.168.55.10,
with a netmask of 255.255.255.0 for the Debian box, and 192.168.55.20
for the WinXP box, with the same netmask.  You don't need a gateway.

The static IPs can be configured in Debian by editing
/etc/network/interfaces,  "man interfaces" will tell you more.

If you want to transfer files properly or mount remote drives from one
computer to the other, install the "samba" package in the Debian side.
The "samba" documentation at samba.org is really good and should be
enough to tell you how to configure it (expect to spend some time on
this).

That should be enough to get you going, and you will learn a *lot* from
this.  Good luck.

-- 
  Henrique Holschuh

Re: A minimalist network

[rhkramer]

On Wednesday, August 17, 2016 05:45:47 PM Miles Fidelman wrote:
> On 8/17/16 5:33 PM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> > As stated by someone else, you need a crossover cable--or something
> > equivalent, like plug cables from both machines into a switch, router, or
> > hub, I think I've seen someone selling like a crossover adaptera female
> > to male adapter wired as a crossover ...
> 
> Not necessarily.  It depends on the NICs.  Auto-detect has become pretty
> commonplace over the past 10 years, and I believe that gigE uses all 4
> pairs.

Ok, I guess I learned something.

> 
> Now if you were connecting RS232 ports

Re: A minimalist network

[Lisi Reisz]

On Wednesday 17 August 2016 22:14:24 Richard Owlett wrote:
> Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on
> my desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when
> ethernet connection is live?

You need to use something to move the files form one machine to another, as 
has been said.

Now that this list has kindly helped me learn how, I use ssh all the time on 
my small home network; but I must admit I use it more for admin than for 
moving files, though I also use it for moving files.

Lisi

Re: A minimalist network

[Brian]

On Wed 17 Aug 2016 at 17:46:27 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

> On 8/17/2016 4:34 PM, Brian wrote:
> >On Wed 17 Aug 2016 at 09:45:39 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> >
> >>I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.
> >>
> >>The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie installed.
> >>Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have multiple installs in a day.
> >>It intentionally has *NO* internet connectivity. It has a small partition
> >>set aside for preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.
> >>
> >>The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as source of preseed
> >>and script files.
> >
> >What is your present technique for getting files from the second machine
> >to the first one?
> 
> Write files a USB flash drive in format readable to other machine.
> That is a nuisance!

Sneakernet. :)

You're on your way to a more wholesome file transfer method. Good luck.

Re: A minimalist network

[Dan Ritter]

On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 05:27:13PM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> > > > Once you've got the physical layer sorted (that is, green blinky
> > > > lights on both machines), then the rest of the configuration
> > > > should be much the same as any network:
> > > > * Either give the hosts unique, static IPs OR
> > > >Run a DHCP server on one of the machines
> > > > * Either refer to the hosts by IP address OR
> > > >Run a DNS server on one of the machines OR
> > > >Write the hostnames in /etc/hosts
> > > > (%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on windows)
> > > 
> > > Ahh the question is HOW 
> > > Bought Cat6 straight thru cable. Neither machine has a light to
> > > blink, but both reacted indicating cable present - but no
> > > communication established YET.
> > 
> > Reacted how?
> 
> The WinXP machine no longer reported a disconnected cable.
> The Jessie Mate machine now reported it was attempting to establish a
> connection.
> 
> IOW both machines recognized a PHYSICAL connection.
> *NOTHING MORE*
> 
> 
> > 
> > Have you assigned an IP address to each?  Done an ifup on the
> > Debian box, and the equivalent on the Windows box?
> 
> No.
> As of now I'm missing much underlying 'education'.
> However "EDUCATION" is an explicit goal.
> 
> > 
> > HOW are you trying to establish communication?  Have you tried a
> > ping? Something else?
> 
> This is only a "status" report.
> I am groping for the questions I *SHOULD BE* asking ;/

There is a classic model of networking in which there are 7 (or
9) layers, each one using the one below it. Here's the
simplified version:

Application Protocol
TCP or UDP socket
IP
network connection

At this point you have the network connection set up, so you
need to configure an IP network on top of it.

When there are only (small number) nodes, you can hand-configure
each machine.

The 192.168.x.y network is traditionally used for this. (There
are two others, one of which is 10.x.y.z, the other of which is
rarely used.)


Tell both machines that they are on the 192.168.1.0 network. The
network mask is 255.255.255.0, or /24 in CIDR notation. There is 
no gateway. One machine can have the address 192.168.1.10, and 
the other 192.168.1.20.

When that is done, you should be able to use ping to get a
response from the other machine's address:

$ ping -c 1 192.168.1.10
PING 192.168.10 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.119 ms

--- 192.168.1.10 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.119/0.119/0.119/0.000 ms

$

At that point, you can consider client and server applications.

-dsr-

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/17/2016 4:34 PM, Brian wrote:

On Wed 17 Aug 2016 at 09:45:39 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:


I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.

The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie installed.
Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have multiple installs in a day.
It intentionally has *NO* internet connectivity. It has a small partition
set aside for preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.

The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as source of preseed
and script files.


What is your present technique for getting files from the second machine
to the first one?


Write files a USB flash drive in format readable to other machine.
That is a nuisance!


Or, are you altering your setup in some way?

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/17/2016 4:33 PM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

On Wednesday, August 17, 2016 05:00:25 PM Richard Owlett wrote:

Ahh the question is HOW 
Bought Cat6 straight thru cable. Neither machine has a light to
blink, but both reacted indicating cable present - but no
communication established YET.


As stated by someone else, you need a crossover cable--or something
equivalent, like plug cables from both machines into a switch, router, or hub,
I think I've seen someone selling like a crossover adaptera female to male
adapter wired as a crossover ...



I've been told elsewhere that a Gigabit interface does not 
require a "crossover" thingy. I date from era of "null modems" so 
I understand concept. More investigation warranted.

Re: A minimalist network

[Miles Fidelman]

On 8/17/16 6:33 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 8/17/2016 4:13 PM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Wednesday 17 August 2016 22:00:25 Richard Owlett wrote:

If retirement is not for education, what use is it?


To retire?  Life is for education - retirement is for slowing down.  
Sadly.




Perhaps a better phraseology would be "Retirement is for learning 
lessons our elders vainly attempted to teach recalcitrant know it 
alls". ???




Retirement is for the dead.

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: A minimalist network

[Miles Fidelman]

On 8/17/16 6:00 PM, Brian wrote:

On Wed 17 Aug 2016 at 17:42:31 -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:


On 8/17/16 5:14 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:


Do I really want an "ftp server"? I can see the WinXP machine as a
"server". Do I have problems with definitions?

Something has to talk, something has to listen and respond.  Even in a
peer-to-peer setup, there has to be a process listening and responding to
incoming packets.  Whether you call it a process or a server - something has
to be running.

Very well put. I know nothing about Windows but the principle you outline
is fundamental to networking. Nothing listening on one machine, therefore
nothing transferred.

As an alternative to an ftp server there is netcat and Ncat. Both run on
Debian and both have Windows versions.


Good point.  If all you want to do is send packets from one machine, and 
see them show up on another one - netcat is just the ticket.


Then again, for testing whether networking is working on one machine, 
there's nothing better than having a server running on another machine, 
and telneting to it's port - see if you get a HELO or equivalent.  With 
netcat, it's all human typing and reading on both sides of the connection.


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/17/2016 4:13 PM, Lisi Reisz wrote:

On Wednesday 17 August 2016 22:00:25 Richard Owlett wrote:

If retirement is not for education, what use is it?


To retire?  Life is for education - retirement is for slowing down.  Sadly.



Perhaps a better phraseology would be "Retirement is for learning 
lessons our elders vainly attempted to teach recalcitrant know it 
alls". ???

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/17/2016 4:11 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:

On 8/17/16 5:00 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:


On 8/17/2016 10:09 AM, Darac Marjal wrote:

On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 09:45:39AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.

The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie
installed. Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have
multiple installs in a day. It intentionally has *NO* internet
connectivity. It has a small partition set aside for
preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.

The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as
source of preseed and script files.

My internet searches turn up too much outdated information
and/or fine detail. Most link assume a server with multiple
clients. Better description would be a peer to peer setup. It
may be convenient to have the Windows machine act as a terminal
for the Debian machine.


If you're connecting the two machines with a single cable, then
either the cable needs to be a "cross-over" ethernet cable, or
one or other other the devices needs to support "Auto-MDI/MDIX".
Support for that was patchy in 10M/100M devices but it mich more
common in Gigabit Ethernet devices.


I'm using Lenovos - a T43 and a R61, each with Gigabit interface.



Once you've got the physical layer sorted (that is, green blinky
lights on both machines), then the rest of the configuration
should be much the same as any network:
* Either give the hosts unique, static IPs OR
   Run a DHCP server on one of the machines
* Either refer to the hosts by IP address OR
   Run a DNS server on one of the machines OR
   Write the hostnames in /etc/hosts
(%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on windows)


Ahh the question is HOW 
Bought Cat6 straight thru cable. Neither machine has a light to
blink, but both reacted indicating cable present - but no
communication established YET.


Reacted how?


The WinXP machine no longer reported a disconnected cable.
The Jessie Mate machine now reported it was attempting to 
establish a connection.


IOW both machines recognized a PHYSICAL connection.
*NOTHING MORE*




Have you assigned an IP address to each?  Done an ifup on the
Debian box, and the equivalent on the Windows box?


No.
As of now I'm missing much underlying 'education'.
However "EDUCATION" is an explicit goal.



HOW are you trying to establish communication?  Have you tried a
ping? Something else?


This is only a "status" report.
I am groping for the questions I *SHOULD BE* asking ;/

Re: A minimalist network

[Brian]

On Wed 17 Aug 2016 at 17:42:31 -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote:

> On 8/17/16 5:14 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> 
> >Do I really want an "ftp server"? I can see the WinXP machine as a
> >"server". Do I have problems with definitions?
> 
> Something has to talk, something has to listen and respond.  Even in a
> peer-to-peer setup, there has to be a process listening and responding to
> incoming packets.  Whether you call it a process or a server - something has
> to be running.

Very well put. I know nothing about Windows but the principle you outline
is fundamental to networking. Nothing listening on one machine, therefore
nothing transferred.

As an alternative to an ftp server there is netcat and Ncat. Both run on
Debian and both have Windows versions.

Re: A minimalist network

[Miles Fidelman]

On 8/17/16 5:33 PM, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

On Wednesday, August 17, 2016 05:00:25 PM Richard Owlett wrote:

Ahh the question is HOW 
Bought Cat6 straight thru cable. Neither machine has a light to
blink, but both reacted indicating cable present - but no
communication established YET.

As stated by someone else, you need a crossover cable--or something
equivalent, like plug cables from both machines into a switch, router, or hub,
I think I've seen someone selling like a crossover adaptera female to male
adapter wired as a crossover ...


Not necessarily.  It depends on the NICs.  Auto-detect has become pretty 
commonplace over the past 10 years, and I believe that gigE uses all 4 
pairs.


Now if you were connecting RS232 ports


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: A minimalist network

[Miles Fidelman]

On 8/17/16 5:14 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:


On 8/17/2016 10:34 AM, Miles Fidelman wrote:

On 8/17/16 11:09 AM, Darac Marjal wrote:


On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 09:45:39AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.

The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie
installed. Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have
multiple installs in a day. It intentionally has *NO* internet
connectivity. It has a small partition set aside for
preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.

The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as
source of preseed and script files.

My internet searches turn up too much outdated information
and/or fine detail. Most link assume a server with multiple
clients. Better description would be a peer to peer setup. It
may be convenient to have the Windows machine act as a
terminal for the Debian machine.


If you're connecting the two machines with a single cable, then
either the cable needs to be a "cross-over" ethernet cable, or
one or other other the devices needs to support
"Auto-MDI/MDIX". Support for that was patchy in 10M/100M
devices but it mich more common in Gigabit Ethernet devices.


Or you could just plug both machines into a cheap ethernet hub.


I did purchase an "8-Port Gigabit Switch". I don't intend open the 
shrink wrap unless convinced there is no other way. As I've said 
elsewhere a major motivation is educational.


Ok - then one thing to educate yourself on is details of the NICs in 
each machine - some will need a crossover cable to work, others will 
auto-detect.






Once you've got the physical layer sorted (that is, green
blinky lights on both machines), then the rest of the
configuration should be much the same as any network:
* Either give the hosts unique, static IPs OR
  Run a DHCP server on one of the machines
* Either refer to the hosts by IP address OR
  Run a DNS server on one of the machines OR
  Write the hostnames in /etc/hosts
(%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on windows)



If you're continually rebuilding the Debian machine, you probably
don't want to fool with peer-to-peer setups.  Probably better
just to enable the ftp server already built into Win XP.


Do I really want an "ftp server"? I can see the WinXP machine as a 
"server". Do I have problems with definitions?


Something has to talk, something has to listen and respond.  Even in a 
peer-to-peer setup, there has to be a process listening and responding 
to incoming packets.  Whether you call it a process or a server - 
something has to be running.


Now, if all you want to do is bounce packets off a machine, all it has 
to do is respond to "ping" - that's generally part of IP processing (if 
configured to respond).


If you want to do anything useful, you have to have something listening 
for incoming packets, connection requests, and transactions.  That could 
be a telnet daemon (gives you a shell prompt when you connect), ftp (if 
you want to move files around), ssh (shell, plus some more interesting 
things), a web server, or lots of other things.


The question is what do you want to communicate.  Usually it's files, 
hence enabling the WinXP ftp server is a good first step. Particularly 
if you're thinking of using that box as a source of files when you're 
building and rebuilding your Debian box - generally, Debian retrieves 
files via FTP.





Another thing to do is install PuTTY on the WinXP box as a
telnet/ssh client.



I've seen terms PuTTY and telnet before - will have to use them as 
search terms.


Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on my 
desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when ethernet 
connection is live?




Good point.  SSH does some additional things like remote command execution.


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: A minimalist network

[Brian]

On Wed 17 Aug 2016 at 09:45:39 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

> I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.
> 
> The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie installed.
> Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have multiple installs in a day.
> It intentionally has *NO* internet connectivity. It has a small partition
> set aside for preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.
> 
> The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as source of preseed
> and script files.

What is your present technique for getting files from the second machine
to the first one? Or, are you altering your setup in some way?

Re: A minimalist network

[rhkramer]

On Wednesday, August 17, 2016 05:00:25 PM Richard Owlett wrote:
> Ahh the question is HOW 
> Bought Cat6 straight thru cable. Neither machine has a light to
> blink, but both reacted indicating cable present - but no
> communication established YET.

As stated by someone else, you need a crossover cable--or something 
equivalent, like plug cables from both machines into a switch, router, or hub,  
I think I've seen someone selling like a crossover adaptera female to male 
adapter wired as a crossover ...

Re: A minimalist network

[Lisi Reisz]

On Wednesday 17 August 2016 21:48:20 Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 8/17/2016 10:05 AM, der.hans wrote:
> > Am 16. Aug, 2016 schwätzte Richard Owlett so:
> >
> > moin moin Richard,
> >
> > look at zeroconf. Both machines can independently setup
> > networking to talk
> > to each other.
>
> The web hits I got for zeroconf indicated it's part of a support
> package for KDE, I'm using Mate. Don't know if that's a problem.
> http://manpages.debian.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi is still giving a 404
> error so I can't check there. Didn't find any link at kde.org
> that looked promising.

Try one of these:
http://mate-desktop.com/community/

They are a helpful enthusiastic lot.

Lisi

>
> > I believe zeroconf came up somehow recently on a new box until I
> > fixed the
> > network cable, so it's likely an option during install.
> >
> > ciao,
> >
> > der.hans
> >
> >> I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.
> >>
> >> The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie
> >> installed. Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have
> >> multiple installs in a day. It intentionally has *NO* internet
> >> connectivity. It has a small partition set aside for
> >> preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.
> >>
> >> The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as
> >> source of preseed and script files.
> >>
> >> My internet searches turn up too much outdated information
> >> and/or fine detail. Most link assume a server with multiple
> >> clients. Better description would be a peer to peer setup. It
> >> may be convenient to have the Windows machine act as a terminal
> >> for the Debian machine.
> >>
> >> Suggested search terms or links.
> >> Thank you.

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/17/2016 10:34 AM, Miles Fidelman wrote:

On 8/17/16 11:09 AM, Darac Marjal wrote:


On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 09:45:39AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.

The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie
installed. Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have
multiple installs in a day. It intentionally has *NO* internet
connectivity. It has a small partition set aside for
preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.

The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as
source of preseed and script files.

My internet searches turn up too much outdated information
and/or fine detail. Most link assume a server with multiple
clients. Better description would be a peer to peer setup. It
may be convenient to have the Windows machine act as a
terminal for the Debian machine.


If you're connecting the two machines with a single cable, then
either the cable needs to be a "cross-over" ethernet cable, or
one or other other the devices needs to support
"Auto-MDI/MDIX". Support for that was patchy in 10M/100M
devices but it mich more common in Gigabit Ethernet devices.


Or you could just plug both machines into a cheap ethernet hub.


I did purchase an "8-Port Gigabit Switch". I don't intend open 
the shrink wrap unless convinced there is no other way. As I've 
said elsewhere a major motivation is educational.






Once you've got the physical layer sorted (that is, green
blinky lights on both machines), then the rest of the
configuration should be much the same as any network:
* Either give the hosts unique, static IPs OR
  Run a DHCP server on one of the machines
* Either refer to the hosts by IP address OR
  Run a DNS server on one of the machines OR
  Write the hostnames in /etc/hosts
(%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on windows)



If you're continually rebuilding the Debian machine, you probably
don't want to fool with peer-to-peer setups.  Probably better
just to enable the ftp server already built into Win XP.


Do I really want an "ftp server"? I can see the WinXP machine as 
a "server". Do I have problems with definitions?


Another thing to do is install PuTTY on the WinXP box as a
telnet/ssh client.



I've seen terms PuTTY and telnet before - will have to use them 
as search terms.


Why would I be interested in ssh as both machines are sitting on 
my desk and _neither_ will be connected to the internet when 
ethernet connection is live?

Re: A minimalist network

[Lisi Reisz]

On Wednesday 17 August 2016 22:00:25 Richard Owlett wrote:
> If retirement is not for education, what use is it?

To retire?  Life is for education - retirement is for slowing down.  Sadly.

Lisi

Re: A minimalist network

[Miles Fidelman]

On 8/17/16 5:00 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:


On 8/17/2016 10:09 AM, Darac Marjal wrote:

On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 09:45:39AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.

The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie
installed. Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have
multiple installs in a day. It intentionally has *NO* internet
connectivity. It has a small partition set aside for
preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.

The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as
source of preseed and script files.

My internet searches turn up too much outdated information
and/or fine detail. Most link assume a server with multiple
clients. Better description would be a peer to peer setup. It
may be convenient to have the Windows machine act as a terminal
for the Debian machine.


If you're connecting the two machines with a single cable, then
either the cable needs to be a "cross-over" ethernet cable, or
one or other other the devices needs to support "Auto-MDI/MDIX".
Support for that was patchy in 10M/100M devices but it mich more
common in Gigabit Ethernet devices.


I'm using Lenovos - a T43 and a R61, each with Gigabit interface.



Once you've got the physical layer sorted (that is, green blinky
lights on both machines), then the rest of the configuration
should be much the same as any network:
* Either give the hosts unique, static IPs OR
   Run a DHCP server on one of the machines
* Either refer to the hosts by IP address OR
   Run a DNS server on one of the machines OR
   Write the hostnames in /etc/hosts
(%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on windows)


Ahh the question is HOW 
Bought Cat6 straight thru cable. Neither machine has a light to blink, 
but both reacted indicating cable present - but no communication 
established YET.


Reacted how?

Have you assigned an IP address to each?  Done an ifup on the Debian 
box, and the equivalent on the Windows box?


HOW are you trying to establish communication?  Have you tried a ping?  
Something else?



--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/17/2016 10:09 AM, Darac Marjal wrote:

On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 09:45:39AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.

The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie
installed. Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have
multiple installs in a day. It intentionally has *NO* internet
connectivity. It has a small partition set aside for
preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.

The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as
source of preseed and script files.

My internet searches turn up too much outdated information
and/or fine detail. Most link assume a server with multiple
clients. Better description would be a peer to peer setup. It
may be convenient to have the Windows machine act as a terminal
for the Debian machine.


If you're connecting the two machines with a single cable, then
either the cable needs to be a "cross-over" ethernet cable, or
one or other other the devices needs to support "Auto-MDI/MDIX".
Support for that was patchy in 10M/100M devices but it mich more
common in Gigabit Ethernet devices.


I'm using Lenovos - a T43 and a R61, each with Gigabit interface.



Once you've got the physical layer sorted (that is, green blinky
lights on both machines), then the rest of the configuration
should be much the same as any network:
* Either give the hosts unique, static IPs OR
   Run a DHCP server on one of the machines
* Either refer to the hosts by IP address OR
   Run a DNS server on one of the machines OR
   Write the hostnames in /etc/hosts
(%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on windows)


Ahh the question is HOW 
Bought Cat6 straight thru cable. Neither machine has a light to 
blink, but both reacted indicating cable present - but no 
communication established YET.




Suggested search terms or links.


A significant motivation is self education. I date from era when 
a UART occupied several square inches of PCB ;/


If retirement is not for education, what use is it?


Thank you.

Re: A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

On 8/17/2016 10:05 AM, der.hans wrote:

Am 16. Aug, 2016 schwätzte Richard Owlett so:

moin moin Richard,

look at zeroconf. Both machines can independently setup
networking to talk
to each other.


The web hits I got for zeroconf indicated it's part of a support 
package for KDE, I'm using Mate. Don't know if that's a problem. 
http://manpages.debian.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi is still giving a 404 
error so I can't check there. Didn't find any link at kde.org 
that looked promising.




I believe zeroconf came up somehow recently on a new box until I
fixed the
network cable, so it's likely an option during install.

ciao,

der.hans


I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.

The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie
installed. Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have
multiple installs in a day. It intentionally has *NO* internet
connectivity. It has a small partition set aside for
preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.

The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as
source of preseed and script files.

My internet searches turn up too much outdated information
and/or fine detail. Most link assume a server with multiple
clients. Better description would be a peer to peer setup. It
may be convenient to have the Windows machine act as a terminal
for the Debian machine.

Suggested search terms or links.
Thank you.

Re: A minimalist network

[David Wright]

On Wed 17 Aug 2016 at 11:34:25 (-0400), Miles Fidelman wrote:
> On 8/17/16 11:09 AM, Darac Marjal wrote:
> 
> >On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 09:45:39AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> >>I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.
> >>
> >>The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie
> >>installed. Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have
> >>multiple installs in a day. It intentionally has *NO* internet
> >>connectivity. It has a small partition set aside for preseed.cfg
> >>and miscellaneous scripts.
> >>
> >>The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as source
> >>of preseed and script files.
> >>
> >>My internet searches turn up too much outdated information
> >>and/or fine detail. Most link assume a server with multiple
> >>clients. Better description would be a peer to peer setup. It
> >>may be convenient to have the Windows machine act as a terminal
> >>for the Debian machine.
> >
> >If you're connecting the two machines with a single cable, then
> >either the cable needs to be a "cross-over" ethernet cable, or one
> >or other other the devices needs to support "Auto-MDI/MDIX".
> >Support for that was patchy in 10M/100M devices but it mich more
> >common in Gigabit Ethernet devices.
> 
> Or you could just plug both machines into a cheap ethernet hub.
> 
> >
> >Once you've got the physical layer sorted (that is, green blinky
> >lights on both machines), then the rest of the configuration
> >should be much the same as any network:
> >* Either give the hosts unique, static IPs OR
> >  Run a DHCP server on one of the machines
> >* Either refer to the hosts by IP address OR
> >  Run a DNS server on one of the machines OR
> >  Write the hostnames in /etc/hosts
> >(%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on windows)
> >
> 
> If you're continually rebuilding the Debian machine, you probably
> don't want to fool with peer-to-peer setups.  Probably better just
> to enable the ftp server already built into Win XP.

When I connect two machines together, I just use the IPv6
addresses which seem stable enough that I have aliases set
up for them.

It also means I don't have to disturb the IPv4 wireless
configuration that all the machines have picked up by DHCP.

> Another thing to do is install PuTTY on the WinXP box as a
> telnet/ssh client.

Cheers,
David.

Re: A minimalist network

[Miles Fidelman]

On 8/17/16 11:09 AM, Darac Marjal wrote:


On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 09:45:39AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.

The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie 
installed. Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have multiple 
installs in a day. It intentionally has *NO* internet connectivity. 
It has a small partition set aside for preseed.cfg and miscellaneous 
scripts.


The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as source of 
preseed and script files.


My internet searches turn up too much outdated information and/or 
fine detail. Most link assume a server with multiple clients. Better 
description would be a peer to peer setup. It may be convenient to 
have the Windows machine act as a terminal for the Debian machine.


If you're connecting the two machines with a single cable, then either 
the cable needs to be a "cross-over" ethernet cable, or one or other 
other the devices needs to support "Auto-MDI/MDIX". Support for that 
was patchy in 10M/100M devices but it mich more common in Gigabit 
Ethernet devices.


Or you could just plug both machines into a cheap ethernet hub.



Once you've got the physical layer sorted (that is, green blinky 
lights on both machines), then the rest of the configuration should be 
much the same as any network:

* Either give the hosts unique, static IPs OR
  Run a DHCP server on one of the machines
* Either refer to the hosts by IP address OR
  Run a DNS server on one of the machines OR
  Write the hostnames in /etc/hosts 
(%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on windows)




If you're continually rebuilding the Debian machine, you probably don't 
want to fool with peer-to-peer setups.  Probably better just to enable 
the ftp server already built into Win XP.


Another thing to do is install PuTTY on the WinXP box as a telnet/ssh 
client.


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: A minimalist network

[der.hans]

Am 16. Aug, 2016 schwätzte Richard Owlett so:

moin moin Richard,

look at zeroconf. Both machines can independently setup networking to talk
to each other.

I believe zeroconf came up somehow recently on a new box until I fixed the
network cable, so it's likely an option during install.

ciao,

der.hans


I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.

The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie installed. 
Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have multiple installs in a day. 
It intentionally has *NO* internet connectivity. It has a small partition set 
aside for preseed.cfg and miscellaneous scripts.


The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as source of preseed 
and script files.


My internet searches turn up too much outdated information and/or fine 
detail. Most link assume a server with multiple clients. Better description 
would be a peer to peer setup. It may be convenient to have the Windows 
machine act as a terminal for the Debian machine.


Suggested search terms or links.
Thank you.


--
#  http://www.LuftHans.com/http://www.PhxLinux.org/
#  "But you could teach these skills to a high-school student, and you could
#  probably teach them to an artist."  -- Richard Roberts

Re: A minimalist network

[Darac Marjal]

On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 09:45:39AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.

The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie 
installed. Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have multiple 
installs in a day. It intentionally has *NO* internet connectivity. It 
has a small partition set aside for preseed.cfg and miscellaneous 
scripts.


The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as source of 
preseed and script files.


My internet searches turn up too much outdated information and/or fine 
detail. Most link assume a server with multiple clients. Better 
description would be a peer to peer setup. It may be convenient to 
have the Windows machine act as a terminal for the Debian machine.


If you're connecting the two machines with a single cable, then either 
the cable needs to be a "cross-over" ethernet cable, or one or other 
other the devices needs to support "Auto-MDI/MDIX". Support for that was 
patchy in 10M/100M devices but it mich more common in Gigabit Ethernet 
devices.


Once you've got the physical layer sorted (that is, green blinky lights 
on both machines), then the rest of the configuration should be much the 
same as any network:

* Either give the hosts unique, static IPs OR
  Run a DHCP server on one of the machines
* Either refer to the hosts by IP address OR
  Run a DNS server on one of the machines OR
  Write the hostnames in /etc/hosts 
  (%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on windows)




Suggested search terms or links.
Thank you.






--
For more information, please reread.


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

A minimalist network

[Richard Owlett]

I wish to connect two laptops via Ethernet.

The Debian machine is having various configurations of Jessie 
installed. Consider it a laboratory experiment. It can have 
multiple installs in a day. It intentionally has *NO* internet 
connectivity. It has a small partition set aside for preseed.cfg 
and miscellaneous scripts.


The second machine is running WinXP Pro SP3 and serves as source 
of preseed and script files.


My internet searches turn up too much outdated information and/or 
fine detail. Most link assume a server with multiple clients. 
Better description would be a peer to peer setup. It may be 
convenient to have the Windows machine act as a terminal for the 
Debian machine.


Suggested search terms or links.
Thank you.