Subject: Re: network configurator -- Newbie Conclusion
From: Ted Goranson (tedg@infi.net)
Date: Mon Jul 02 2001 - 09:11:11 MDT
Many thanks to Perry Phillips, Patric Callahan and John Canning who
went into heavy mentor mode to help me get through a conceptual block.
I am so enthused about the help I got that I want to give back immediately.
My basic problem was that I come from the Mac world, as many YDL
newbies will, and was confused by some unfamiliar terms and the lack
of accessible guidance. So what should have been a trivial task
literally took days.
Here is a summary of advice for YDL newbies who are searching the
archives with the identical problem. Please correct me where I am
wrong.
Dear YDL Newbie:
If you are coming from the Mac world to YDL, you will have a real
shock. Naturally, the command line and the need to memorize tons of
commands is strange. But the most difficult notion to get past is the
diversity of vision in what you will encounter.
The Mac is the product of a well-developed vision of interface and
usability. As you rummage around in it, the words will be plainly
comprehensible, the panels will be of the same granularity, terms
will mean the same thing across the board, everything will be where
it is supposed to be.
Not so with Linux. Every piece was developed by someone different,
using a different approach to terminology, user interface design, and
granularity. You will not be grokking a new world, but mini-grokking
hundreds of different worlds put together.
Here are some translations of one world you will certainly encounter:
the Network Configurator. This is the app/control panel you will use
to set up your network.
You will find it called "Network Configurator," "Network
Configuration," "netconfig"
You will not find it in "preferences => networking," nor in "programs
=> settings," both of which DO have applications/control panels to
confuse you. Ignore them. Look under "system" instead.
Although Red Hat often installs this same program, you will be hard
pressed to find help on it as most RHL texts and on-line help
explains setup through an onmibus application called linux.conf.
You will find four tabs.
The first is "Names." It will not be obvious to you, but "hostname"
means the name of the machine you are looking at. In Mac-speak it
would read: "Computer Name." (As with every such confusion you will
encounter, there are bound to be solid historical reasons for using a
non-intuitive phrase. That's the game, and a few Linux snobs will
sneer that you didn't learn that vocabulary. Though there are many
such obfuscations, the YDL community doesn't have many such snobs. So
take heart.) At the bottom is a place for addresses of services that
might assign names for your computer.
The second panel is "Hosts." You are used to thinking of your Mac as
a single system. You don't have that luxury with Linux. As with the
distributed development community and the operating system composed
of parts, Linux thinks of your machine as a bunch of pieces that have
to be told how to collaborate. This panel is not for what you would
guess, namely what the name and address another machine would use in
talking to this one. Rather, it seems, this is the address your
communication device (almost certainly an ethernet chip) will use to
talk to its internal boss. The default address shouldn't be changed.
The names of course should be related to those of the first panel. In
Mac-speak, this would be an advanced setting panel behind the others.
The third panel is the most important. Here you will likely have two
lines that have significantly different meaning but notationally
appear similar. The panel is termed "Interfaces." One interface is
the interface of the internal card to the machine. This would never
(does never) show up in the Mac. You have already been asked some
information about this line in the previous panel. Leave it alone.
The other line means what you think it does almost. This is not the
interface of the machine looking out, but looking in. Here is where
you create the IP address other machines on the net will see, and
some related parameters. By rights it would be the first, perhaps
only main panel.
The 4th panel, called "Routing" is information concerned with
"looking out" from your machine. The "gateway" in this case means the
device on the network that looks out not to the local net but to the
bigger world. Type the IP address of that device. In my instance, the
device uses the common address of 192.168.1.1. Almost certainly, you
will choose the same device (ethernet 0) to look out from that you
chose to look in to.
I hope this helps at least one person save a day, and not walk away.
Best, Ted
-- _____________ Ted Goranson Fusecap and Sirius-Beta, Virginia Beach USA 757/426-6704 tedg@sirius-beta.com Symmetry Conference: http://www.isis-s.unsw.edu.au
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