If it looks like Ethernet is going all right, or if you have no indicator lights to tell you anyway, it's time for the next step. The netstat command can give you all kind of crazy information about how your machine thinks it's set up. Typing netstat -nr should give you something like the following:
hypeserve:~# netstat -nr Kernel routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 192.168.124.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 126 eth0 127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 3 lo 0.0.0.0 192.168.124.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0The first line tells you that for the network 192.168.124.0, the machine will always use an ethernet connection. The second line is the loopback connection. All calls to 127.0.0.0 will be served by your machine without troubling ethernet. The last line is my phantom gateway, a default place my machine will search for any other addresses I feed it. Someday when I have another machine and a live Internet connection...
If any of these is missing or severely strange, check your rc.inet1 file. You may have mistyped something, put a period in the wrong place, or need to pick a different line of that strange multiple-choice ifconfig line. Failing all those possibilities, check out the Linux Network Administrator's Guide for a much more detailed explanation of what's happening here.
The next bit of fun is testing to see if your connections really do anything. Switch to your client machine, start it up, and see if you can Telnet to your Linux machine. (If you have a Slackware distribution, these services are automatically set up. If you don't, check the /etc/inetd.conf file to make sure they're turned on. You probably just have to uncomment a line.) You should be able to feed NCSA Telnet (or whatever Telnet program you're using) the IP address of your server, wait a moment, and log right into the machine as if you were working on it directly. FTP should also work, but remember - by default, FTP doesn't let you log in as root. You have to edit the /etc/ftpusers file to comment out the line blocking root. With FTP you'll be able to happily transfer files back and forth from your client to your server - this is the main tool you'll use for setting up web pages on the server, eventually.
Now that the basic system works, it's time to contemplate a great evil: name service.
Copyright 1995 by Simon St.Laurent. All rights reserved. You may print this document for yourself or others at no charge, but commercial distribution without permission is prohibited.
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