Arch Linux

nightfrost

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-16

Posts: 647

sharing files over ad-hoc network

If anyone can help me out with this, I will be ever so greatful.

I'd been planning to get a wireless access recently, but since I only have two computers here (my laptop with ArchLinux, and my girldriend's desktop with WinXP), I've decided to go for an ad-hoc network, letting the desktop computer be wired to the LAN and sharing the network over to my laptop. That all worked well; Windows is giving my laptop an ip through dhcp and finally we can both surf away on those cyberwaves.

Now; what I would really need to be able to do, is to share files between the two computers. It doesn't really matter if this has to be done with SAMBA or with an ftp-client (perhaps the ftp-client variety would be of preference though). I've been trying to get this working for the entire day, but I'm stuck. I've no clue as of what to do.

Not only am I completely lost when using Windows, but I've no experience with networks whatsoever. Anything would be highly appreciated. Thanks.

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

Well..you haven't given any details of what you've tried so far, so here's some general stuff, which you may already know.

Taking your post in reverse order, the first thing you need to be able to do on any network is ping each other. Have you tried it, on both machines?

Assuming it works, the next step is to enable file sharing on the Windoze box. That makes it a samba server, as far as your laptop is concerned. Install smbclient on your laptop, and you're ready to go (after reading the man pages, of course ).

FTP? Sure, if you prefer. Put any of the *ftpd packages on your laptop, and your gf can surf you with Explorer or IE - no additional apps required.

My personal favourite, though is NFS. Install SFU on Windoze, and you can mount the drives on your laptop as nfs.

Questions/comments/whatever - you know what to do. 

nightfrost

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-16

Posts: 647

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

Many thanks for the reply.

The thing is, I've not been able to ping the computers (in either direction), which is weird, since the internet connection is shared.

I have enabled sharing in Windows, but I see the first thing to get working is the pinging.

This might also be relevant: on the laptop, I have only got an ip-address and subnet mask. No gateway... should there be a gateway, although the internet connection is shared and working?

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

OK. Can you give us the ip details of both machines? On Windoze, that's

ipconfig /all

at a command prompt. Also, the output of

route

on your laptop.

nightfrost

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-16

Posts: 647

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

From the laptop:

Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.0.0     *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth2
193.11.222.0    *               255.255.254.0   U     0      0        0 eth0
default         john-p4.mshome. 0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth2
default         olf4-gw.sgsnet. 0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth0

Ah, damn! no copy&paste in windows. Translating roughly from the Swedish:

ip configuration for windows
Host computer ......... john-p4
primary dns-suffix ............
nodtype ................. unknown
ip-routing activated ............ yes
WINS-proxy activate .............. no

ethernet (not wireless)
dhcp ........ no
ip-                    193.11.222.99
netmask           255-255-254.0
gateway            193.11.222.1
dns                     193.11.224.20

wireless net:
DNS-suffix .................:
phsyical address ...................: {do I really need to post this?}
dhcp activated ........................ no
ip .....................192.168.0.1
netmask .................. 255.255.255.0
gateway ..................... :

something like that... :?

nightfrost

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-16

Posts: 647

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

I should have probably said this earlier. The win computer is called john-p4, and the laptop is nightfrost. The network is called home.

Isn't it weird that route shows john-p4.mshome?

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

Right - things are getting a bit clearer. The laptop has two interfaces, eth0 and eth2, which is not a problem in itself, but route is showing both of them as the default route, which is a problem. eth0 is still pointing towards your public subnet 193.11.222.0, and eth2 towards your private 192.168.0.0 one. You need to disable eth0, which will leave you with the following route table:

Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.0.0     *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth2
default         john-p4.mshome. 0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth2

john-4.mshome is there because it's the laptop's default gateway - nothing wrong with that.

I've never used XP, but I'm told it has some kind of firewall - make sure that's turned off while you're setting this up.

nightfrost

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-16

Posts: 647

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

Alright! Looking good. I can ping the laptop from windows now (although I can't ping the windows machine from the laptop; made sure firewall's off...). I'll move on now with the various alternatives you listed. Thanks a lot for this! (I'm sure I'll get back in a few minutes though )

nightfrost

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-16

Posts: 647

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

I still can't get it working :?

Should I be able to see my laptop in Windows, if I open "show other computers in workgroup"? Cause I can't. I installed SFU for windows but I don't know where to go from there (it does seem somewhat heavy duty for my simple needs). I can't get around with Samba either.

I'll be trying some more and I will post back my results here. Meanwhile, if there's anything obvious I might have overlooked, please do tell.

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

Well, you really need to be able to ping both ways, before we get on to specific apps. If you can ping from XP to Arch, but not Arch to XP, my guess is there's a routing error in XP, but like you, I don't know much about Windoze stuff. Post the output of route print on Windoze, and we'll have a look.

Incidentally, you can take a screenshot of the focused window by doing Alt + Print Screen - save you all that retyping!

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

Im sure theres plenty of samba documentation on the Wiki. That should be able to get you going.

nightfrost

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-16

Posts: 647

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

Well, you really need to be able to ping both ways, before we get on to specific apps. If you can ping from XP to Arch, but not Arch to XP, my guess is there's a routing error in XP, but like you, I don't know much about Windoze stuff. Post the output of route print on Windoze, and we'll have a look.

Incidentally, you can take a screenshot of the focused window by doing Alt + Print Screen - save you all that retyping!

I haven't been able to get things working yet, and I'm pretty sure it's Windows thing. As a matter of fact, I've now been able to try the to connect to the desktop computer with a friend's windows' laptop, and it's still a no-go.

However, I've managed to get the ftp-thing working, and I will probably stick with that until I have more time on my hands. I just have to make sure about one thing though, when it comes to that.

While on the windows computer, I connect to the laptop using ftp://192.168.0.75, i.e. the local ip address given to it. Now, my ISP has put a limit on a maximum of 15 gig/day of transfers over the network. But since I'm connecting to a local ip-address, those bytes transfered aren't gonna be counted, right? My question is; the data going back and forth here are just local, right?

Im sure theres plenty of samba documentation on the Wiki. That should be able to get you going.

Thanks. I've been already reading up on the wiki. But it does seem like the problem is on the windows side. I've now also come across other windows users having the same problem. It seems fairly common.

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

My question is; the data going back and forth here are just local, right?

Yeah - you're ISP won't know or care about this.

nightfrost

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-16

Posts: 647

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

My question is; the data going back and forth here are just local, right?

Yeah - you're ISP won't know or care about this.

Great! I'll just stick with that then.

Thank you very much for your help here. I really appreciate it

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

No problem.

Incidentally, did you try

route print

on the Windoze box, or are you happy enough now?

I had to boot into Win2000 myself this morning (dumb Windows-only online banking :x ), and mine looks like this.

Yours would have two interfaces (besides loopback), the default route would be to the internet, but there should also be a route to 192.168.0.0 through the wireless interface.

Anyway, glad you've got something going.

nightfrost

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-16

Posts: 647

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

Actually; I wouldn't mind if I could get this working for real. Cause right now, I can only browse the laptop, from the win-box. For some reason, I can't setup an ftp-server on windows; I get "incorrect login" every time I try to log in. It would be great if I could mount shares.

Here's the screenshot http://naderehvandi.net/route_print.JPG

I'm not sure how interpret it...

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

I was really hoping NOT to see the 192.168.0.0 route, but it's there.

If you really want to fix it, You probably need a Windoze user i.e. not me. If I had to fix this, i would start by sticking ethereal on both machines and see what the traffic is - and is not.

Sorry I don't have anything else to offer.

nightfrost

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2005-04-16

Posts: 647

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

tomk, you've been of so much help trough this whole thing. And I've been a fool.

Let me start by saying this: Right now I'm running samba on my laptop, mounting windows shares like normal drive. On the win-box I can browse my shared linux directories.

How did at all work? I was running in circles, going through my steps over and over again; and the third time I checked the firewall it turns out I hadn't explicitly enabled my laptop's ip-address.  :oops:  When I had tried this first, I'd turned off my firewall (which is a third-party program), but the inbuilt winxp-firewall was enabled. When I finally turned that off, I forgot about the third-party one...

Heh... aside from minor quirks (i.e. me not know samba perfectly well), everything is under control now.

My apologies for overlooking something that obvious and dragging you through this whole mess. And, once again, many thanks!

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: sharing files over ad-hoc network

No problem - glad you're sorted out. Networking's my thing, and my own set up is running smoothly, so it was good to have a problem to think about for a change.