how to connect desktop and netbook through router?

[tomcloyd]

I've been looking in a lot of places for close to 45 minutes and I'm not getting any closer to solving this problem: I have a netbook, a desktop, and both have wired connections to a wireless router, through which they access the internet. I want them to be able to access each other, via the router. I have no idea how to do this, and I'm not even sure what this sort of setup is called, so my searching for a solution is a bit befuddled, I'll admit.

Can anyone direct me either to the correct term or some kind of how-to?

Thanks!

[Telengard]

Re: how to connect desktop and netbook through router?

I want them to be able to access each other, via the router.

Please state your goals more explicitly. The term access is too broad to determine whether networking is a suitable solution for the problem you are trying to solve.

[tomcloyd]

Re: how to connect desktop and netbook through router?

Sorry. I want to be able move files back and forth between the two, via the router connection. Most particularly, I want to be able to run Unison on the Netbook, so that it examines the desktop and matches the files of interest on the two machines.

From the "info unison" output"

unison-2.27.57 - a file-synchronization tool for Unix and Windows

Unison is a file-synchronization tool for Unix and Windows. It allows
two replicas of a collection of files and directories to be stored on
different hosts (or different disks on the same host), modified sepa‐
rately, and then brought up to date by propagating the changes in each
replica to the other.

I currently run this by shutting down my desktop, which runs off an external USB hard drive, moving that hard drive to the netbook, and accessing it through a USB port there. Works fine, but that shutdown-and-move step is burdensome.

Is that enough detail?

[Telengard]

Re: how to connect desktop and netbook through router?

It is for me. Sorry but I have no experience with Unison. Hopefully someone who does will spot your thread.

[toad]

Re: how to connect desktop and netbook through router?

I can give you a quick run down of how I used to do the very thing you are talking about.

1. configure hostnames for your two computers and make sure they can ping each other - if I remember correctly ssh is also a prerequisite
2. install unison on both machines
3. configure unison
4. Bob is your uncle

However, these days I use dropbox.

[tomcloyd]

Re: how to connect desktop and netbook through router?

Thanks. Is it possible for you to give me a little more info?

1. configure hostnames for your two computers and make sure they can ping each other - if I remember correctly ssh is also a prerequisite
2. install unison on both machines
3. configure unison
4. Bob is your uncle

However, these days I use dropbox.

1. What's a hostname? How do I "configure" them? "...ping each other" = ? "ssh" - huh? All this makes me think I need a tutorial of some sort, where all these are discussed. All the searching I have done re: "home network" has turned up how to connect multiple computers to the internet through a router. Not my problem at all. I would think that what I'm trying to do is a common thing for anyone with multiple home computers and a router, in which case I'd expect some how-to somewhere, but haven't found it.

2. unison only needs to be on one machine, as far as I know, but if I'm wrong the fix is trivial. The machine running it just need read/write access to the files on the other, I think. THAT's what I cannot see how to set up - the access.

I note that in Dolphin, in Places, I can see a "network" icon. Clicking it, when both of my computer have wired router connections, I can see my computers names (is THAT their hostname?) - "tomc-desktop" and "tomc-laptop", as directories. Opening tomc-laptop, for example, I see "tomc-laptop [00:25:b3:7a:6c:b1]". Its full pathname is "network:/tomc-laptop.local/tomc-laptop [00:25:b3:7a:6c:b1].workstation". Clicking THAT give me an empty panel.

Can you make sense of that for me??

I looked at dropbox, and it looks slick, BUT is useless without an internet connection. I just need my two computers to talk with each other. Simple. I'd like to grab a file on one computer while on the other, and move it to the other, for example.

Reading through search results for "network ...blah" is mindnumbing. It's a whole universe, and none of it yet addresses my problem, sadly. Still looking. Any further comments you have would be appreciated.

[arist]

Re: how to connect desktop and netbook through router?

If you don't get it to work with Unison, and both computers are running Linux, then you could try what I use to accomplish the same end. Set up NFS networking between the two machines (excellent and easy how-to here). This makes each machine show up as a directory in the other's hierarchy. Just follow that how-to: that's all the networking you need to learn. Then, with the two machines networked, just use the copy command in the terminal, like so:

cp -uprv [dir on netbook] [dir on desktop]

The -u option copies only changed files; -r works on subdirectories; -p preserves each file's timestamp; -v allows you to see which files are being copied in which direction.

So, say the directory on the netbook that I want to sync is mounted via NFS on the desktop at /home/user/netbook, and the directory on the desktop I want it to sync with is /home/user/syncstuff. The command

cp -uprv /home/user/netbook/* /home/user/syncstuff

will synchronize the two directories. I put this in a script with a "for" loop in order to sync particular directories rather than the whole machine.

Edit: To really synchronize, if changes could have happened on either machine, you have to repeat the command in the opposite direction:

cp -uprv /home/user/syncstuff/* /home/user/netbook

[tomcloyd]

Re: how to connect desktop and netbook through router?

Hey this sounds like exactly what I'm wanting to do. Will give it a try. Just having something to try is encouraging, for sure.

Thanks for responding (believe me, I appreciate ALL responses - this networking business is like alien poetry to me).

t.

[Telengard]

Re: how to connect desktop and netbook through router?

like alien poetry to me

Hmm ...

tajpe’ joj ‘oy’wI’Daq

boS yabwImey

legh choSmeyDaq

nuqDaq Hon e’be’ pa’

Qoy ghoghmey tun

retlh HeH yabmey
ghIH nuqDaqvIpbe’

Torn between pains,

the gathering of my mind,

seeing shadows move,

which aren’t there.

Hear the voices whispering

along the edge of minds
coming out of nowhere.

Borrowed from http://www.angelfire.com/ak/bhagwandave/pklingon.html

[toad]

Re: how to connect desktop and netbook through router?

First you have to make sure the two computers can talk to each other. This can be done in two ways:

ip addresses or host names - ip addresses are prolly easier since you only have two boxes.

In either case afaik you will have to assign static ip addresses. I believe detonate has written an excellent howto in this forum somewhere. Look and ye shall find.

Once you have succeeded in doing that attempt to ping one computer from the other as in "ping 192.168.X.XX" or some such. With host names you could do "ping _hostname_". However, I have not seen a proper hostname howto in this forum, so stick to ip addresses.

Now install unison. Depending on your needs it may be enough on just the one machine. Configuring unison is fun and you will bang your head at least a couple of times against a brick wall.

But arist's idea is a good one. The absolute easiest way of boxes talking to each other on a network is prolly sambe - check your systemsettings - advanced - samba for config options. I never managed to get samba to work but after a couple of clicks it all started working automagically.

Oh well, have fun and all the best.

[Telengard]

Re: how to connect desktop and netbook through router?

In either case afaik you will have to assign static ip addresses.

Usually not necessary. Unless you are manually entering host names in /ect/hosts I don't see why you 'd need to establish a static IP. In fact, all the hosts on my network use DHCP addresses assigned from the router. If I want to make sure the host always receives the same IP address, I simply map it to the appropriate MAC address in the router. It usually is not necessary to do even that much. I would be quite surprised if Unison requires static IP addresses.

But arist's idea is a good one. The absolute easiest way of boxes talking to each other on a network is prolly sambe

Except that was not his suggestion. He suggested NFS. It is not the same as Samba.

I would have suggested Samba, but that has nothing to do with Unison AFAIK.

[toad]

Re: how to connect desktop and netbook through router?

Yeah well, let's not split hairs nfs, samba, unison - it was lateral thinking on arist's part.

But anyway, if you don't assign static ips how do you know which computer is which? Okay, you may have some devilish wizardry inbuilt in your router but I don't and I doubt this is standard - ergo there has to be some way for unison to uniquely identify the two boxes which are to be synchronized. afaik this can only be done via ip addresses or hostnames as a convenient extension.

But if there is another way I am sure everybody will want to know

[Telengard]

Re: how to connect desktop and netbook through router?

But anyway, if you don't assign static ips how do you know which computer is which? Okay, you may have some devilish wizardry inbuilt in your router but I don't and I doubt this is standard - ergo there has to be some way for unison to uniquely identify the two boxes which are to be synchronized. afaik this can only be done via ip addresses or hostnames as a convenient extension.

I should confess that I don't know the details behind the router's DHCP service. It seems to assign the same IP address to the same MAC every time anyway. So I do take advantage of that, but there is also a feature of the DHCP server to manually assign IP addresses to MAC addresses in a table.

Hostnames, DNS names, NetBIOS names, are all shortcuts to the IP address, but If you have dynamic IPs then you can use a name server to do the translation for you. A name server would be most useful for inter-networking, but I've never needed such a thing on my tiny LAN.

For example, part of the Samba package is the nmblookup tool. It resolves the IP address of any SMB server on your LAN given its name. SMB servers provide this information automatically by broadcast, if I understand it correctly that is. Typical usage:

$ nmblookup MyServer
querying MyServer on 192.168.11.255
192.168.1.7 MyServer<00>

As you can see Samba is a very handy kit to have. Since I come from the windoze world, I brought my knowledge of M$ networking with me. It really made sense for me to use Samba.

I don't meant to take anything away from NFS. On the contrary, I know almost nothing about NFS. I'm quite sure it has many very useful features, and someday I will be sure to read about it.

[vinnywright]

Re: how to connect desktop and netbook through router?

http://mostlylinux.wordpress.com/network/nfshowto/

VINNY

[toad]

Re: how to connect desktop and netbook through router?

Nice one Vinny! I don't think I've ever be able to find an NFS howto that made sense but reading the first words of your link was like a homecoming: Write down your information

But here we come to the crux of the matter again: We need ip addresses.

Telengard suggested that routers assign the same ip addresses to the same mac. Can anybody confirm? Indeed, when I ran my tiny lan with three computers all switched on in a specific order ip addresses remained the same.

Tom, you still following us? What is your setup? Do you have any other computers entering your lan or is it just your desktop and your netbook? No third party boxes, friends, nosy neighbours?

Perhaps you ought to check your ip addresses over the period of a week or two to see whether they change or stay consistent. If they remain constant there is no need for setting up static ip addresses Use for example the ifconfig to find out your ip address.