connecting kubuntu pc to windows lan without router

[heticu7]

Hello all.

Last Saturday, 10th, when I got up I checked my steam forums and found this new topic:
"Switched to Linux full time"
I thought Linux had died out so I was immediately interested. I have been a Windows user since the first version after DOS 6.22.

I have tried Linux off and on over the years but never had the time to learn it. I retired in 2014, and after 5 years of retirement activities, I decided to see if any new Linux distros had been published that would allow a newbie like me to learn it. In 2019 I only found those that I had tried before, and found them to be too much work for my Windows trained brain to grasp. So I decided to forget it.

Then this posting on steam. If you read through the discussion, there appear to be more and more Windows users who are really tired of MS and their "big brother" control attitude, and would like to switch to Linux also, full time. So on Monday, after that thread discussion and some research, I sacrificed one of my Windows PCs and installed Kubuntu. Totally got rid of Win10. So I am committed to learning Linux at whatever curve I can manage.

I decided that if I can learn how to connect my new Kubuntu install to the rest of my Win10 LAN, that might be a sufficient ice breaker to get me started. So far, I'm still trying to break that ice.

Other experienced Linux users in that thread said that connecting Kubuntu to the LAN should work with no problem right out of the box. However, mine did not; at all. I think I have researched enough to see that it's because I don't have a router. I live in my RV full time now, and my internet is wi-fi over cellular. I could not find a router that was designed to link cellular wi-fi; they all required a broadband cable for internet service. So I tried just connecting all of my PCs with Ethernet cables and switches. This has work great for 2 years between my Win10 PCs, just communicating P2P.

The first thing I noticed after installing Kubuntu was an error message popping up every couple of minutes telling me something like "wired network connection failed". I did some more research and found a posting that describes how to connect a Linux laptop to a Win laptop via direct Ethernet cables, setting up the Linux side with a static IP, which is not exactly what I was trying to do, but if it works for 2 laptops, I figured it should work for my desktops as well. It did... somewhat. I was able to get the Kubuntu PC set up on it's side of the LAN. But, when I went looking for my Win PCs, it only found/saw some of them, and it only asked me for user credentials on 1 of them; which I provided and was able to connect to all shared drives. When I try to look into another PC on the LAN, I get a message something like: "cannot find any shares". And, I still can't see the Linux PC on the LAN from any Win PC.

All of the Win PC's are set up the same way: Data and Archive drives all sharing, and the Ethernet IP settings: Automatic (DHCP). I'm guessing that in the absence of a physical router, Win10 must have some limited router software built into it which uses DHCP to assign everybody a unique ID on the same subnet.

After doing all of this and having more questions than answers, I decided to join this forum so that maybe I could get some clear understanding of the how's and why's of connecting Linux PCs to Win PCs, without a router. Or, is there already a tutorial made that I could read/run to learn what I am missing?

Thanks for any help!

[Schwarzer Kater]

Welcome to this forum and to Kubuntu. :-)

To get help from some of the more experienced people here, it would be good if you could provide some more information, e.g. which version of Kubuntu (for example: 20.04 LTS) do you use? What is the output of ip a in Konsole? What are IP adresses and network mask of your Windows computers? Do you just want to have access to the Windows shares from Kubuntu or do you want to share something from Kubuntu to Windows, too? Etc.…

If I understood correctly your PCs are all in one room and connected to a switch via Ethernet, but there is no device that operates as a DHCP server?

[oshunluvr]

In the olden days, you had to have a "cross-over" cable to do a direct connection. But now I think most NICs are smart enough to detect the connection. You might try follow this: https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...ethernet-cable

BTW, connecting two computers directly with a cable is the same as connecting them through an ethernet switch so you're not going to be better off not using the switch.

I'm trying to understand your set up and what you're trying to do. You said you want to connect to your Win10 LAN but then said you no longer have a LAN, so I'm rather confused. If you are using the same wireless hotspot for all your devices to connect to the internet and still using a switch to connect them to each other - that IS a LAN - just one without DHCP/DNS services.

Your windows machines allow you to enable file sharing with a click and then they're wide-open to each other. Windows is enabling a SAMBA connection between the computers without a lot of user workload. Linux - being infinitely more secure just won't let you "open the door" so to speak. The people that told you it was an "out-of-the-box" thing probably have never tried it.

So assuming you would prefer to just connect your Linux box to your Windows machine via the network, what are you trying to accomplish? Just file sharing or more than that? You need both machines to be on the same subnet (or a wide enough one that they can reach each other) and you need to enable a file sharing protocol that both OSs understand - SAMBA is the default choice.

How about starting over with making the connections using the hardware as you wish them to be, then we start getting info?

Connect all the PCs to the switch and to the wireless internet connection.

On the Windows machine, open a CMD window and type "ipconfg /all" to get the IP addresses it's using. There should be one for each active device. You can ignore all the "Media disconnected" ones.

On the Linux machine, the command is "ifconfig" to get the same info. You may need to install "net-tools" to use ifconfig. Just open Konsole and type ifconfig in it.

The next step to to verify the two devices can see each other. In Konsole and type "ping -c 3 -I <Insert Linux IP here> <Insert Windows IP here>" and enter. You are using the two ETHERNET device IPs here. The second option there is a capital i and not a 1. So if the Linux ethernet device IP is 192.168.1.27 and the Windows ethernet IP is 192.168.1.11, the command is:

ping -c 3 -I 192.168.1.27 192.168.1.11

By specifying the IPs to ping from->to we know we are using the wired connections and not the wireless. The command will output three attempts to ping They should all be successful and rather quick. Post your results and more specific about what you're trying to accomplish.

[heticu7]

Welcome to this forum and to Kubuntu. :-)

To get help from some of the more experienced people here, it would be good if you could provide some more information, e.g. which version of Kubuntu (for example: 20.04 LTS) do you use? What is the output of ip a in Konsole? What are IP adresses and network mask of your Windows computers? Do you just want to have access to the Windows shares from Kubuntu or do you want to share something from Kubuntu to Windows, too? Etc.…

If I understood correctly your PCs are all in one room and connected to a switch via Ethernet, but there is no device that operates as a DHCP server?

I downloaded and installed Kubuntu distro 22.04 LTS, which was reported to me by several others on the steam forum as the most newbie friendly.

I don't see a way for me to attach/upload a file here, so here is the output:

heticu4@heticu4-kubuntu:~$ ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: enp0s31f6: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 70:85:c2:30:38:6d brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 169.254.145.44/16 brd 169.254.255.255 scope link noprefixroute enp0s31f6
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 fe80::51ad:d141:bc72:78d3/64 scope link noprefixroute
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: wlp5s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 2c:8d:b1:5c:73:ad brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.237.230/24 brd 192.168.237.255 scope global dynamic noprefixroute wlp5s0
valid_lft 2213sec preferred_lft 2213sec
inet6 2600:1010:b148:a313:41a3:c35e:943d:3ab2/64 scope global temporary dynamic
valid_lft 3338sec preferred_lft 3338sec
inet6 2600:1010:b148:a313:14b8:a786:6f67:4c63/64 scope global dynamic mngtmpaddr noprefixroute
valid_lft 3338sec preferred_lft 3338sec
inet6 fe80::bb:5a48:af78:d7fd/64 scope link noprefixroute
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
heticu4@heticu4-kubuntu:~$​

The IP addresses for all hosts, 6 Win10 and 1 Kubuntu, were set as static by me yesterday after some more research and discussion on another forum. They all begin with 169.254.145. and have unique individual endings. The subnet mask for all is 255.255.0.0 (/16).

My ultimate goal is to be able to share data seamlessly and effortlessly between all hosts, all directions. But, I thought I should take one step at a time and first learn how to get the Kubuntu host seeing the Win hosts. I figured I would then learn how to share my Linux directories with the LAN, and Windows would see them.

All of my PC's are in my 36' RV Trailer; 3 in the front room, all connected to a switch; 4 in the back room, all connected to another switch. There is a 25' Ethernet cable connecting the 2 switches from front room to back room.

As I have learned over the last couple of days on Computer Forum, my entire Win10 LAN has been getting its assignments and being managed by APIPA. In the absence of a router, and thus any DHCP, Win10 simply filled in with APIPA. That is why things have been plug-and-play for 2 years.

I fully expected to fire up the Linux box this morning and start file sharing, but Dolphin is showing me even less LAN than it did 2 days ago.

After all of the forum discussions over the last week, I forgot I posted this here, so I just posted another thread in the Network section under 22.04 earlier today. I will attempt to delete that posting now.

[heticu7]

In the olden days, you had to have a "cross-over" cable to do a direct connection. But now I think most NICs are smart enough to detect the connection. You might try follow this: https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...ethernet-cable

BTW, connecting two computers directly with a cable is the same as connecting them through an ethernet switch so you're not going to be better off not using the switch.

Thanks, I already saw this. This is what I was describing in paragraph 6, lines 2 & 3 of my original post.

I'm trying to understand your set up and what you're trying to do. You said you want to connect to your Win10 LAN but then said you no longer have a LAN, so I'm rather confused. If you are using the same wireless hotspot for all your devices to connect to the internet and still using a switch to connect them to each other - that IS a LAN - just one without DHCP/DNS services.

Sorry, I don't see where I said anything like that at all in my original post. You'll have to copy and paste the section that you think said that.

Please refer to my last posting above for more info.

[Schwarzer Kater]

Just a really quick answer, which is more of another question as I won't have any time to get much further into TCP/IP and Samba networking till next week to write something more, unfortunately (but I hope this will help at least a little bit):

- Did you update Kubuntu since you installed it? The current point release is Kubuntu 22.04.1 and iirc there was at least one update of Samba and it's components since 22.04 was released in April…

Samba is responsible for network connections with Windows ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_(software) ), and if you want to share something from Kubuntu to Windows you will have to install the server side of Samba (which is not included by default in Kubuntu), but can easily be installed by sudo apt install samba in Konsole).
The client side of Samba should work ootb without installing Samba explicitly as mentioned above, as certain components of Samba are included by default in Kubuntu, iirc.

PS: To get access from Windows to Kubuntu after installing the server side you will have to create a Samba user account, either sudo smbpasswd -a yourusername in Konsole or you should also be able to do that in Systemsettings -> Network.
To share something then you could use Dolphin or edit /etc/samba/smb.conf .

[heticu7]

Just a really quick answer, which is more of another question as I won't have any time to get much further into TCP/IP and Samba networking till next week to write something more, unfortunately (but I hope this will help at least a little bit):

- Did you update Kubuntu since you installed it? The current point release is Kubuntu 22.04.1 and iirc there was at least one update of Samba and it's components since 22.04 came out in April…

Samba is responsible for network connections with Windows ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_(software) ), and if you want to share something from Kubuntu to Windows you will have to install the server side of Samba (which is not included by default in Kubuntu), but can easily be installed by sudo apt install samba in Konsole).
The client side of Samba should work ootb without installing Samba explicitly as mentioned above, as certain components of Samba are included by default in Kubuntu, iirc.

Thank you for your response. The only updating I have done since original installation are the updates that appear (twice now in the past week) in the task tray. Both times I have clicked "update all" and let it do it's thing. Both times it downloaded and installed a plethora of updates for various apps and system utilities. I trust that Samba was included in those updates, since I did not particularly inspect each line item.

I will follow your instructions and try to install the server side of Samba.

BTW, how do I verify my current point release of Kubuntu?

UPDATE:
I did some research and found the Info Center app. It lists things like KDE Plasma Version, etc, and at the top it shows: Kubuntu 22.04.
So I went and looked at the file that I had downloaded from the Kubuntu website, and that file is named: "kubuntu-22.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso"

[Schwarzer Kater]

Hello heticu7,
have you found a solution in the meantime?
I am sorry to look your thread up only now, but I had to recover from a rather serious Covid infection, which put me into the hospital…
Greetings