New to linux networking

[Raven-sb]

Hi All,

I have some networking knowledge however I've never had to set up a network in linux before. Basically I have four workstations, each with their own hostname and static IP.

WS1 has IP 192.168.100.136 and is running Kubuntu Fiesty with a hostname of raven4600
WS2 has IP 192.168.100.137 and is running Kubuntu Edgy with a hostname of tiger2800
WS3 has IP 192.168.100.138 and is running CentOS with a host name of centos1
WS4 has IP 192.168.100.139 and is running CentOS with a host name of centos2

DNS and Gateway settings have been set up correctly. I can ping each WS IP successfully however when I try to connect to them using a command such as finger, the connection is refused. Commands such as w, who only see the user on the local WS. IE all computers are running, I run who on WS1 and only the user on WS1 is recognised as being logged in to the network, none of the users on the other WSs are. If I try a command such as

finger <user>@192.168.100.136 I get a connection refused error. If I change the command to finger <user>@raven4600 I get a host unknown error.

Basically I want to set things up so that each system can talk to eachother, share files, and run network commands. Any help would be warmly appreciated.

Oh yes I disabled the software firewall for all WSs except for WS3 just to see if the firewalls were causing the problems. No such luck. I have a hardware router firewall which is still running, but I haven't played with it yet.

Regards

Raven

Edit:

I've created test accounts for use on the systems but still can't get things to work.

[penguin.ch]

Re: New to linux networking

Being merely a beginner in terms of networking (attempting to set up my first own internet server at present) I have to guess - but there is one pitfall I've already met with, so to speak:

If the subnet masks and broadcast addresses of all machines involved are nonuniform (read: differing from one another), things might become a little ugly, I'd say.

[jgreen6883]

Re: New to linux networking

Might want to check and see if it's due to your firewall.

[Raven-sb]

Re: New to linux networking

Thanks for the responses, the subnet masks and broadcast addresses of the systems are uniform. It may be the firewall. I'll do some research and some tinkering, hopefully I'll be able to get it sorted out.