Publisher's Forum
This is a blatant, undisguised attempt to elicit some free help. (Well, maybe not totally free.) I've been playing in my basement, trying to get NFS and TCP/IP running using only public domain source code. I'd like to connect several DOS/Windows stations to an AT-class machine running Linux. I'd also like to get PPP running so that all the toys at home can talk with the machines here at work. So far I've invested about four evenings into this project. I've installed Linux, and succeeded in getting it to talk to commercial TCP/IP packages running on the DOS machines. Or, at least, almost succeeded. Ping, PCNFSD, and FTP appear to work, but when I run Telnet, the Linux Telnet daemon hangs (with considerable regularity) in a select() call. I suspect this bug is a product of my using an ethernet card that's older than my oldest child, but I can't seem to get the kernel configuration script to recognize any of my newer cards, and my initial attempts to disable the auto-configuration failed. Given another evening or so, I expect I can find a way around this bug, so I'm pretty comfortable with the UNIX end. In all honesty, though, I don't know where to begin on the PC end. I have several TCP/IP drivers and packet drivers copied from various Internet sites, but my initial scan of the so-called documentation left me totally unenlightened. I have a vague idea of how these pieces are supposed to fit together, but sense that I'm missing a lot of details that are going to be critical to getting it to work. Moreover, I have no experience with PPP. Surely someone reading this magazine has installed a public domain version of TCP/IP and PPP on a DOS station. Do me a big favor and write a detailed account of how you did it. Where'd you get the files? Which version did you use? What hardware are you running? How did the finished configuration files look? I know this isn't a particularly hard task, but I don't want to invest any more scarce evenings than absolutely necessary. Life is too short to spend it doing this kind of detective work. Thus, I'll make you a deal. You write the details, and I'll turn it into a story and give you the byline (and the author's stipend).
Help, please,
|