[SWLUG] server Linux

[Justin Mitchell]

On Tue, 2003-04-08 at 19:49, Rhys Sage wrote:
> SME is allegedly based on Red Hat 7.2 so it's supposed to
> auto-configure itself to my network card. Sadly, it doesn't seem to
> know this. When I bring up Network Neighbourhood, the drive lights on
> the server come on but the server doesn't show up in Network
> Neighbourhood.

> I need a quick solution that's 110% guaranteed to work. I'm so fed up
> with the whole idea now that I'm beginning to believe Linux is quite
> naff and I'm thinking of getting NT server instead.

At the moment it is very hard for us to give you quick answers to your
problem. Its like trying to guess whats wrong if someone complained that
their car didnt move when they pressed the accelerator, and all they
would tell you is that its a ford and it should work.

You need to give us a LOT more detail so we can work out what exactly it
is that has gone wrong and stops the file sharing working. (to continue
the analogy: is it out of petrol, is the engine running, etc.)

You are not trying to do anything that is unusual, linux can do all
those things easily and it has been done by thousands of people before.
You likely have some simple problem, which is just not obvious to you as
a beginer, and we will try to help you, but you have to help us with
information first.

So...

First step,

Can you ping the linux machine from the windows machine, or vice versa ?
The command on each is 'ping' followed by the IP address.

If that doesnt work, then does the network card have the right IP
address and netmask ?
Use '/sbin/ifconfig eth0' to list the current settings.
if they are correct, tell us what the address are you may have made some
mistake in those choices.
if not. 
Does the HWaddr, and Interrupt numbers look plausible ?

if not, then the driver has probably not been loaded.

What is the the network card you are using ?
If you are unsure run '/sbin/lspci' and look for the 'Ethernet
controller' line in there.

See if it attempted to load the driver but failed.
check the output of 'dmesg | more' and look for lines beginning with
eth0: what do they say ?