Very Computer

I'm in a bit of a tiff here.

I want to install linux (SuSE 5.3) on a laptop that doesn't have a CDROM.
I do have SuSE 5.3 running on a desktop with a CDROM, so I thought I could
do a NFS install via PLIP.
Apparently I thought wrong.
Here's what I did:

desktop (pentium 60, 24 MB RAM, 4x CDROM)
- installed PLIP: insmod plip
- start PLIP: /sbin/ifconfig plip1 192.168.0.1 pointopoint 192.168.0.2 up
(I used plip1 because neither plip0 or plip2 will work on the server. The
ip addresses were chosen rather arbitrarily because neither machine is
intended to be hooked up on the Internet soon)
- mount CDROM drive: mount /cdrom (/cdrom is the directory where I mount my
CDROM, obviously)
- added "portmap: 192.168.0.2" to /etc/hosts.allow and "/cdrom 192.168.0.2"
to /etc/exports (to export my /cdrom directory to the client). (Obviously I
did this first)

All this worked, that is to say, I didn't get any funky error messages.

Laptop (pentium 75, 16 MB RAM)
- boot with SuSE boot disk (the same one I used for the install on my
desktop)
- go to "install modules" and 'install network card", where I chose "PLIP -
parallel line"
- the default address and IRQ settings seem to work, since the install
program told me that the PLIP module was successfully installed.
- I then filled in the ip-addresses for client (192.168.0.2) and server
(192.168.0.1). I did escape out of the name server dialog, because I hadn't
bothered setting up a name server.
- The install program tries to mount 192.168.0.1:/cdrom and nothing happens
for some time. It all ends with the error message that the network doesn't
seem to be running (duh!). A ping from the server seems to confirm that.

Question: Did I do something wrong software-wise? I checked various
postings concerning PLIP installs and they all seem to include what I did
here, with the exception that many include settings for the client part,
which I assumed the SuSE install script took care off.

The only flaky part in my attempt that I can see is the cable: I salvaged a
parallel port cable from an old LANTastic Z package (a cardless network
between 2 computers - for DOS), assuming it would be a Laplink lookalike.
Anybody know if this was a valid assumption or did I cheapskate myself in
trouble?

As allways: answers will be greatly appreciated and will earn you
everlasting gratitude (a bit less if your suggestion doesn't work).

Thanks.

PS: The laptop is a Dell XPi75, which has a suspend-to-disk mode. Do I need
to set aside a separate partition for that and if so, what kind of
partition do I need (FAT, vFAT, ext2fs or something weird)?

Karel Jansens
jansens_at_ibm_dot_net

===============================================================
Having a kid at sixty, that's an accident.
Having a piano fallen on your head, that's just bad luck.

Agent WD40,* Steel
===============================================================

G'day Karel,

I've never bothered replying to a post before, but I just happened to do
a successful PLIP/NFS install on a Toshiba laptop last night so i
thought what the hell, I'll have a guess at where you screwed up.

My experience was that it doesn't give any error messages along the way
(since you're not really doing anything yet!) but only when you attempt
the NFS mount.

If you read the PLIP howto they mention a few other steps which you
don't appear to have performed. On the desktop do the following:

insmod plip
route add -net 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 dev plip1
ifconfig plip1 192.168.0.1 pointopoint 192.168.0.2 up arp
route add 192.168.0.2 plip1

Basically you haven't added the routing info so the packets don't know
where to go!
I had to do some searching on Deja-News to find that I needed the "arp"
on the end of ifconfig. The post where this is mentioned (some UK linux
newsgroup from a couple of weeks back) says that this is a necessity on
the server side for the NFS install. Don't know why, read the man page
and tell me!

Also, add ALL:ALL to /etc/hosts.allow. (Play it safe and turn off your
modem first!)

What you have in /etc/exports looks OK.

You don't mention sending SIGHUP's to the relevant daemons to reread the
config files. I presume the daemons are actually running?

The following will get the daemons configured in either case. (I have
RH, so not sure if the scripts are the same name or in exactly the same
place for Suse.)

/etc/rc.d/init.d/inet stop
/etc/rc.d/init.d/inet start

/etc/rc.d/init.d/portmap stop
/etc/rc.d/init.d/portmap start

/etc/rc.d/init.d/nfs stop
/etc/rc.d/init.d/nfs start

Quote:> Laptop (pentium 75, 16 MB RAM)
> - boot with SuSE boot disk (the same one I used for the install on my desktop)
> - go to "install modules" and 'install network card", where I chose "PLIP
> -parallel line" - the default address and IRQ settings seem to work, since
> the install program told me that the PLIP module was successfully installed.
> - I then filled in the ip-addresses for client (192.168.0.2) and server
> (192.168.0.1). I did escape out of the name server dialog, because I hadn't
> bothered setting up a name server.

I did exactly the same on the equivalent part of the RH install. As long
as you use IP numbers, you shouldn't need a nameserver.

Quote:> - The install program tries to mount 192.168.0.1:/cdrom and nothing happens
> for some time. It all ends with the error message that the network doesn't
> seem to be running (duh!). A ping from the server seems to confirm that.

This was the symptom I had prior to adding the "arp" to ifconfig as
above. However, in your case, I believe its the lack of routing info
which is the main problem.

Quote:> Question: Did I do something wrong software-wise? I checked various
> postings concerning PLIP installs and they all seem to include what I did
> here, with the exception that many include settings for the client part,
> which I assumed the SuSE install script took care off.

I think you basically missed the routing info on the server side. I
don't know if SuSE does all the relevant stuff for the laptop, I presume
so. If not, and you have a free shell console during the install try and
do it by hand yourself. Can't hurt!

Quote:> The only flaky part in my attempt that I can see is the cable: I salvaged a
> parallel port cable from an old LANTastic Z package (a cardless network
> between 2 computers - for DOS), assuming it would be a Laplink lookalike.
> Anybody know if this was a valid assumption or did I cheapskate myself in
> trouble?

Don't know about the cable. To test it you can boot the laptop with a
rescue disk with a custom kernel which has PLIP compiled directly in. (I
say this because i could not insmod PLIP on the laptop after booting the
rescue disk. Don't remember the error message. Anyway, my solution was
to make the custom kernel with PLIP hard-wired in and use that to boot
the laptop.) Then do the appropriate *on the desktop and also

route add -net 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 dev plip1
ifconfig plip1 192.168.0.2 pointopoint 192.168.0.1 up arp
route add 192.168.0.1 plip1

on the laptop and ping in both directions. I did this to try and
understand PLIP before I did the install. It might seem like a lot of
effort for little gain, but hey, we use linux to learn right! If you're
really a * you can copy binaries for telnet and ftp onto another
floppy together with the relevant libraries. Then on the laptop:

mknod /dev/fd0 b 2 28
mkdir /mnt/floppy
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

Then create the soft links in the /lib directory to the libraries on the
floppy, and try and telnet back to your main box using the telnet binary
on the floppy. If you're lucky your rescue disk will already have route,
ifconfig and telnet and you can skip making the extra floppy. I found
this a useful exercise to try and understand things.

Quote:> As allways: answers will be greatly appreciated and will earn you
> everlasting gratitude (a bit less if your suggestion doesn't work).

Post back if any of this helps (or doesn't). I'd be interested to hear
if my first post was a total waste of time! Don't bother with my email,
its totally bogus.

Good luck,
Greg

There you are then. I did read what you mention above in the man pages, but
then I found a plip installation description on the net (on the Linux
laptops site) which made no mention of those lines, so I thought: I'll
follow this guy's advice, he must know what he's doing.

Even so, with the addition of your lines, I still came up empty.

Then I looked at the daemons...

You were right: I had - naively - assumed that the necessary daemons were
already running, but as it turned out, my SuSE linux had defaulted to a
network-less installation (a bit silly for a linux machine, if you ask me).

Luckily, SuSE has YaST, just about the best setup tool I've ever seen on
linux (though I've not seen that many), and I was able to set up PLIP from
YaST and activate the daemons (I had to do it this way, they're not in the
directories you mentioned and I'm too lazy to search for them. YaST found
them without prob).

I seem to have a network now, but whenever I try to mount the /cdrom
directory, I get a "permission denied" on the client. I did go back (via
YaST) and set my network file access to "easy", which, according to the
help text, should allow even a transistor radio to access the server. Maybe
so, but not the laptop.

In any case, I'm halfway there, and you, mate, have earned yourself a
couple of pints. I happen to own a (Polish) bar in Brussels, so if you're
ever in the neighbourhood, give me a ping and I'll be happy to serve you
the toxine of your choice.

Karel Jansens
jansens_at_ibm_dot_net

===============================================================
Having a kid at sixty, that's an accident.
Having a piano fallen on your head, that's just bad luck.

Agent WD40,* Steel
===============================================================

G'day Karel,

If I'm ever in Brussels I will drop you a line as I would never pass
up the chance for a couple of pints! (Especially Belgian beer,
although perhaps you have Polish beer?!) Anyway, your beer is safe for
now since I'm stuck in the U.S. for now and will probably go back to
Australia when I finish my job here.

I must also apologise for the delay in replying, my ISP's news-server
doesn't catch every post and I only noticed your reply via a search in
dejanews. You will notice I have re-replied to the first post.

The laptop I installed on was a work machine, so I don't have it here
at home and am flying a little blind not being able to test things.
However, here's a couple of things you could try.

The fact you got "permission denied" seems to imply that the packets are
at least moving back and forth. A good start! Can you ping from the
server?

To check various configuration issues try:

rpcinfo -p

to see if your portmapper, nfsd and mountd processes are actually
running. (rpcinfo will probably be in /sbin or /usr/sbin).

Sample output:

   program vers proto   port
    100000    2   tcp    111  rpcbind
    100000    2   udp    111  rpcbind
    100005    1   udp    635  mountd
    100005    2   udp    635  mountd
    100005    1   tcp    635  mountd
    100005    2   tcp    635  mountd
    100003    2   udp   2049  nfs
    100003    2   tcp   2049  nfs

If the processes aren't running then I would recommend finding the
actual scripts and running them by hand.

find /etc -name "*nfs*"

will tell you where they are. As good as tools like YAST are,
sometimes it pays to read the ascii files!

You said you edited the /etc/hosts.allow file? However, note that
you will have to restart inetd to re-read this file and let the
changes take effect. Assuming you haven't rebooted with the file
changed, or done this manually, this could definitely be the problem.

Rather than find the scripts you can also:

ps -aux

and look for the portmap, nfs, inetd and mountd, process names. Then

killall -HUP "process"

On my machine this would be:

killall -HUP inetd
killall -HUP portmap
killall -HUP rpc.nfsd rpc.mountd

This ensures that all the config files are freshly read. I would
definitely try this.

All the above about daemons was touched on in the prior posts, but its
worth checking it again using these different methods.

A couple other things come to mind. Are you exporting and mounting the
same
directory-name? Trivial I know and your first post says that you are.
Another point is that I think the filesystem you are exporting
will have to be world-readable and executable, and any parent
directories will also have to be world executable. I'd test this, but I
don't have the portable here to try.

There are also issues concerning the mapping of uid's and guid's which
are mentioned in the man pages. For example, I know I couldn't access
parts of my /home filesystem because the uid's on the client and
server didn't match. I had to play some games to get access.

However, if your /cdrom is drwxr-xr-x and owned by root I think you
should be
OK, although I'm certainly no expert.

I didn't scribble anything else down in my logbook which might be
relevant, although I have one last thought. In /etc/services and
/etc/inetd.conf are there any services which are explicitly commented
out? For example, nfs, rpc (which is the portmapper), mount. If they
are, then (I believe) your tcp wrapper won't allow these services to
be accessed even if the daemons are running. YAST should have handled
this, but again, you must restart inetd to re-read the files. (Sorry to
harp on this if you have indeed restarted the daemons.)

Something you could test, comment out telnet in /etc/inetd.conf,
killall -HUP inetd, and see if you can telnet localhost. (Or if its
already commented out, put it back in.) Then try changing things in
/etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny. This might tell you if things are
working as they should and perhaps help point you in the right
direction.

Anyway, best of luck! This is pretty sad, but when I heard the CD start
to spin
on my machine it was a bit of a thrill...

Cheers,
Greg

Greg,

Everything is - almost - hunckadory here now. It turned out that all I had
to do was add the option "insecure" to the /cdrom line in /etc/exports.
(Well, in fact I started with "no_root_squash" and "link_relative", but
they didn't do anything. I left them in there, 'cuz I'm lazy).

I now have a full-blown linux laptop (not counting some minor glitches on
the mouse and screen issue, guess I'll have to log into the laptop linux
site again, though they don't have much on Dell Latitute XPi75 machines).

As for the beer, you have an open invitation standing. We serve - of course
- the best beer in the world (which happens to be all Belgian), and there's
some Polish stuff too (it's like Stella Artois with extra * - you
know them Polish dudes!)

Extremely grateful for the help and time you put in,

Karel Jansens
jansens_at_ibm_dot_net

===============================================================
Having a kid at sixty, that's an accident.
Having a piano fallen on your head, that's just bad luck.

Agent WD40,* Steel
===============================================================

G'day Karel,

Top stuff!

Quote:> Everything is - almost - hunckadory here now. It turned out that all I had
> to do was add the option "insecure" to the /cdrom line in /etc/exports.
> (Well, in fact I started with "no_root_squash" and "link_relative", but
> they didn't do anything. I left them in there, 'cuz I'm lazy).

I would never have thought of trying that, just assuming that the
install would have used a privileged port. Anyway, glad it works, and
I'll write that in my book in case I ever install SuSe via PLIP.

This may happen sooner rather than later since I have just discovered
that I got a pay-rise backdated to October. I've wanted to buy a Laptop
for a while, this might be my chance! And its about time to try another
distribution...

Have fun fine-tuning your machine!

Greg

If I find the time this week-end I'll try to jot down my wrestlings with
The Machine and mail them to you. Maybe they could serve as an example of
"How Not to Do It". ;^)
(I would need your real e-mail address however).

BTW, everything works now, except for the APM-settings (they require a
kernel recompile, yet another first for me! But that can wait).

I had some fun trying to find the right settings for the on-board trackball
in X (it's "PS2-mouse" on the /psaux port) and I found out that a DSTN
LCD-screen _doesn't_ like settings higher than 16 bbp, but that was my own
fault. I had read the specs, but wouldn't believe them. I do now...

Quote:> This may happen sooner rather than later since I have just discovered
> that I got a pay-rise backdated to October. I've wanted to buy a Laptop
> for a while, this might be my chance! And its about time to try another
> distribution...

Well, if you have the cash... I had to shop on a budget and was extremely
lucky to find this baby at under 350.- euro (Dell Latitude XPi75, pentium
75, 16 mb ram, 850 mb hdd, dstn colour, 28k8 pcmcia Dacom modem)

Quote:> Have fun fine-tuning your machine!

I wouldn't call it fun. It's more like an urge, a drive, an obsession, a
frenzy. I couldn't sleep until it worked. People have avoided me, because I
could only talk about one thing. I almost got into a fight because I didn't
start driving when the lights turned green...

Sounds familiar?

Karel Jansens
jansens_at_ibm_dot_net

===============================================================
Having a kid at sixty, that's an accident.
Having a piano fallen on your head, that's just bad luck.

Agent WD40,* Steel
===============================================================