Networking two Gentoo machines with a null modem cable

IronEye · n00b Joined: 29 Aug 2004 Posts: 23

I have two machines. One is Gentoo machine (let's call this A) on my network that connects to the internet through my Windows machine using ICS. The other is a pretty old machine (lets call this B) that is connected to my Gentoo box via a home made 9-pin null modem cable. I currently only have three of the wires hooked up so I'll have to use software flow control. This machine is booting off of a livecd. I want to connect the two machines together so the livecd can have internet access. I set up pppd on A and ran it on ttyS0 and got a blank command line. I assume this is fine. When I tried to connect to the machine with pppd from B I got the error:

Couldn't get channel number: Input/output error.

I was essentially following the guide at: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Serial-Laplink-HOWTO/

How do I know what is hooked up to what ttyS? Can I define any IP addresses I want in /etc/hosts? Does anyone have some general advice or a more thorough guide?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 10:35 am Post subject:

IronEye,

Before you set up ppp on thge link, check that the link works. Put minicom on each end and verify you can send characters backwards and forwards over the link.

You cannot use software flow control, since the flow control chacaters can appear in the data on the link. It will be so slow that not using flow control at all should be OK.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

IronEye · n00b Joined: 29 Aug 2004 Posts: 23

How should I go about getting minicom on the currently networkless machine? Could I simply copy the exectuable file to a floppy one of my Gentoo machines and copy it on to the other. They are both pentium 2's, does this mean I wouldn't have to change the compilation flags on my networked Gentoo machine?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 2:20 pm Post subject:

IronEye,

I'm not sure if minicom has any libraries it depends on but the copy process should work if you copy everything.
If you have DOS, you can send files to the serial port with

m_sqrd · Guru Joined: 18 Jul 2005 Posts: 367

I'd do a emerge --buildpkg "see man emerge" then just copy the file via floppy.