home network with two Linux and two Apple Macs, CUPS and ???

[toad]

HELP!!!

I have:
1 Linux desktop with music and functioning printer(s)
1 Linux laptop with films
2 Apple Macs with pictures on them

Now I want to share the wealth of info on those computers. Also, clients should be able to print.

I know Apple uses CUPS, but that is about all I know...

That is all there is to my "wants". I am sure there are about three hundred different ways to implement them.

My preferred method would be to start from scratch, being able to ping each address from every other machine so I can follow what is happening along the way (I'm kind of slow...).

Has anybody an idea how I can achieve this and what tools I need?

[Fintan]

Re: home network with two Linux and two Apple Macs, CUPS and

I don't have a mac but they both use samba so tis should be pretty straight forward.

Maybe this will help:
http://pc-erato2.iei.pi.cnr.it/lesaux/nix2osx.html

and

http://www.linux.com/feature/54739

Hope that helps

[toad]

Re: home network with two Linux and two Apple Macs, CUPS and

Thanks, Fintan. Bear with me on this one because there are a number of reasons why I'd prefer not to use samba:

1. Samba is, afaik, for M$ and the last thing I want is for every Tom, Dick and Harry next door, and I am sure there are some M$ script kiddies amongst them, to get nosy.
2. Mac is also Unix based. It would appear to make more sense to use a native protocol.

Well, that was it already...

I have made some headway since in that I adjusted the /etc/hosts on the apple macs so I can ping the Linux boxes. It doesn't work the other way round though - must be some mac firewall...

So I can ping, but how do I set up a cups printer from a client? AAARRRGGGH!

[bigmac60]

Re: home network with two Linux and two Apple Macs, CUPS and

Look into using ssh and ssh with X forwarding. It
works well for file sharing and X forwarding
for opening apps on my linux box but running
them from my iMac. Konqueror and Dolphin
are easy to set up to work with ssh. Also I have
a complete kde 3.5 desktop set up and working
on my iMac. I installed it using Fink and
use it on one virtual desktop. I use it when
using my open source programs. Its not
perfect but works well for me.

[toad]

Re: home network with two Linux and two Apple Macs, CUPS and

Cheers, bigmac. I make extensive use off ssh, especially fish in konqueror. I find the -X flag far too slow, however, to be of any use even though I also tried compression.

So how would you use it for a network? It is good for shifting small files back and forth, but for listening to music, watching films off another computer? I dunno...

[toad]

Re: home network with two Linux and two Apple Macs, CUPS and

Right, I got the printing working using localhost:631 combined with known ip addresses/names in /etc/hosts

Now for NFS

[muzicman0]

Re: home network with two Linux and two Apple Macs, CUPS and

toad...
Are all your boxes set up with static IP addresses? That would be most helpful.

There is a topic here that has a link in it with how to network computers with nfs...seems pretty simple, but I haven't tried it.

hope that helps...if you need help setting up static IP's, or why you would want them, let me know.

mm0

[toad]

Re: home network with two Linux and two Apple Macs, CUPS and

Wow, cheers muzicman0!

It so happens that I'm on dhcp and as if by magic all machines get assigned the same ip addresses every time they log on. That is fine while it works and I've not really given my dhcp server any choice but I'd be well screwed if it decided to do things differently!

So yes. Please do tell about static ip addresses and many thanks for your generous offer

[muzicman0]

Re: home network with two Linux and two Apple Macs, CUPS and

no problem...

The DHCP server will probably work most of the time, but if you have two of the PC's off for a while, and start only one of them up, you run the risk of the DHCP server issuing a different IP address. Basically there is a ttl (time to live), or sometimes referred to as a lease time...if that time expires, then the IP address could be assigned to a different PC. Some home routers allow you to set a lease time that never ends, so for all practical purposes, you end up with static IP's...if that is not the case, then read on to see how to set up static...

First of all, if you are using the default network manager, get rid of it, and install wicd. The default manager has issues with static IP's.

Second of all, write down the IP's of all your PC's, just so you have them handy.

I am going to assume that it is in this format: 192.168.x.y.

- 192.168.x.0 is the subnet you are on (mine is 192.168.0.0, yours may be different.)

- 192.168.x.y is the host address (my laptop is 192.168.0.94)...notice the third octet (the '.0')...it's the same as the subnet address...another common combination is 192.168.1.y for the IP, the basic thing to know is that on a typical home network, the first 3 octects should be the same.

- You will also need the address of your router interface...otherwise know as the default gateway. Typically, this would be 192.168.x.1, but may be different. It is the address you would type into firefox to access the web based setup of the router.

- I am assuming that there is nothing special to your home network, so it is a 255.255.255.0 mask. If the above IP's look right to you, then I am sure this is the case...if not, then you may not have a '/24' network, but I highly doubt it, unless you have changed this on your own, and in that case, you already know what the network mask is!

- In wicd, set up a static IP with the following info:

*IP address that you want to use (in the format of 192.168.x.y). Keep in mind that if you use the same addresses that the DHCP server hands out, you will need to change the range of the DHCP server, for instance, mine hands out IP addresses from 192.168.0.100 to 192.168.0.199. If I want to set a static IP of 192.168.0.125, it would be best to change the DHCP range on my router to a range that does not include that IP...reason being, you run the risk of the DHCP server duplicating your static IP, and having 2 machines with the same IP is not good! Your router should allow you to change this with no problems.
*Subnet mask of 255.255.255.0
*Default gateway of 192.168.x.1 - again, this is assuming that the '.1' is the address of your router...some are .254, and you might have manually changed this.
*DNS - set this to the same address as the default gateway.

Save this and restart networking (or the machine). hopefully all is well. If not, you can always revert back to DHCP to troubleshoot.

Couple of other thoughts...sometimes routers could be configured with a 10.x.y.z address. This is uncommon (at least here in the states, but possible), or even a 172.16.x.y address. Basically, your ip address scheme has to be set up on the same subnet to work.

Hopefully this makes sense, and isn't either too complicated, or not enough info...I can sometimes ramble...

If my assumptions on the IP address format is way off, send me an example of 2 of the IP's on your PC's, and I can taylor the directions to that format...

mm0

[bigmac60]

Re: home network with two Linux and two Apple Macs, CUPS and

Normally all I'm doing is opening spreadsheets or gnucash on the iMac
that are on my linux box. The only multimedia I've done is to open movie
trailers or mp3s on the linux box by clicking on them in konqueror. Both
work well but I haven't tried streaming movies or music but have
read that vlc will do that.

I look forward to see what your solution is!!

[toad]

Re: home network with two Linux and two Apple Macs, CUPS and

@ muzicman0

Nice one. Thanks a ton. I've got wicd on my laptop so I'll be giving it a whirl. I thought you'd be coming on to me with /etc/network/interfaces. I am glad you didn't 'cos there is no such file on my system...

Only problem is: I'll be away until after Easter so this whole caboodle will have to wait for a month. Sorry about that

@ bigmac60

I've installed netatalk and avahi and even get leopard to see my desktop in the "zeroconfig" way (brilliant misnomer!) but will it connect? Will it #!@~ ! Anyway, I may try some more while away, 'cos we'll have the two laptops with us (OSX 10.4 & ArchLinux)... Will let you know in case anything comes up

[muzicman0]

Re: home network with two Linux and two Apple Macs, CUPS and

cool...I hope it helps.

I never know how much info to give, but since I see you on here all the time, I tried to keep it as simple as possible, figuring you would be able to fill in the blanks...

mm0

[toad]

Re: home network with two Linux and two Apple Macs, CUPS and

Well, I've been playing "away from home" since December - no more kubuntu on my machines so I haven't been here as often as I wanted to. Your info is spot on, though.

My internal network is on 192.168.178.* - I am comfortable within these rather restrictive boundaries What I don't get is the 255.255.255.* bit - whatisit? Whydonigetit? You know?

[muzicman0]

Re: home network with two Linux and two Apple Macs, CUPS and

It's a mask...I won't go into all the details, but here goes:

You can look at an IP address in binary like this:

11111111.11111111.11111111.11111111

Of course, the #'s might be 1's or 0's (real quick, if it's a 1, the bit is turned on, of it's 0, it's turned off. If it's on, then you add the values together, values start at 1 and go to 128 doubling every step, going from right to left, so for instance:

11111111 = 255 (128+64+32+16+8+4+2+1), or
00100001 = 33 (0+0+32+0+0+0+0+1

Hopefully that makes scense...)

What the subnet mask does it tell the network which part of the IP address is the 'network', and which part is the host. (from my previous post, 192.168.0 is the network - more technically, 192.168.0.0, and the last octet [we'll say .100] is the host - or PC)

so, if you have a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, then in binary it is:

11111111.11111111.11111111.00000000

so, any bit (a one or zero) that is on (meaning it has a value of 1) is used for the network portion...so that means that the first 3 octects (192.168.0) is the network, and the last octect (.100) is the host.

that is the easiest example.

you could also have 255.255.0.0, which would make 192.168 the network, and .0.100 the host. This would be handy if you have lots of PC's on a network. It gets really tricky when you have something like this:

255.255.255.128 as a mask...in binary, this would translate to:

11111111.11111111.11111111.10000000

So you could have this as a network IP: 192.168.0.1...notice that the network uses all 4 octects...this means that the valid host range (usable IP's) would go from 192.168.0.2 to 192.168.0.126 (.127 is the broadcast address...probably out of the scope of this little write up!).

On the previous example, the next available network number would be 192.168.0.128, with usable hosts from 192.168.0.129 to 192.168.0.254, with .255 being the broadcast address...

you can also go the other way...you could have a mask of 255.255.128.0, which in binary would be

11111111.11111111.10000000.00000000

This just means that your network range would be 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.1.0 with usable hosts between 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.1.254...all being able to communicate without a router.

the usable #'s in a mask (in decimal format is 0, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 255).

this really is the basics, I didn't go into classes of IP addresses, etc, but hopefully will help you understand what the mask is for.

mm0

[muzicman0]

Re: home network with two Linux and two Apple Macs, CUPS and

thought I should also say this...for 2 hosts to communicate, they have to be on the same network, unless a router is involved...so the subnet mask allows to two hosts to determine what the size of the subnet is, and how many hosts are on each network.

What a router does, is allow communication between networks...as opposed to a switch that will only forward packets (by default) to a host on the same network.

So, when you set up your home router, it has 2 interfaces, one that gets an IP assigned by your ISP, and one that is the 192.168.x.y address. The router is the bridge between these 2 networks, and is what allows you to communicate with the outside world.

mm0