This page intends to explain how to configure the network on a linux-running PC to talk with mac os x. First it is a memo to remind me how i've done it. But if it can be useful for someone else...
First we configure the pc to be able to travel on the network. About Debian Linux provides an interesting (but a bit long) tutorial about this subject. This chapter is a shorter howto.
If this has not be done during the install of the linux OS, we set the host name of our machine in /etc/hostname:
pc-name
Then we configure a bunch of files in /etc/. /etc/hosts file with the loopback and the names of the machines:
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.x.x.01 pc-name.domaine.org pc-name
192.x.x.02 nb-name.domaine.org nb-name
/etc/host.conf should contain the correct stuff by default:
order hosts,bind
multi on
/etc/resolv.conf contains the nameserver to go on a LAN:
nameserver 192.x.x.x
/etc/network/interface defines the ip addresses for the interface (typically the first ethernet card: eth0):
# blah
auto lo eth0
iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.x.x.01
netmask 255.255.248.0
network 192.x.x.x
broadcast 192.x.x.255
gateway 192.x.x.x
/etc/network/options is likely to contain:
ip_forward=no
With those initializations, the linux pc is able to rlogin on the mac and to scp files from it. But a few steps are required too be able to connect to the pc from the mac.
mac os x uses samba to see other filesystems. Fortunately, a samba server is included in the basic debian distribution, so the "connect to server" option of the finder is able to visualize our pc. We just have to configure the samba passwords on the pc in order to log in, using the smbpasswd commande. When run by root, other user's passwords may be changed.
cvs is an open-source version control system useful to developer teams to access the source code without conflict. As lots of people, i use it simply to maintain the same versions of programs and other stuff on various machines (even if my whole homedir is not under cvs yet). The following environment variable has to be set in the .cshrc of the mac (where the cvs repository is located):
# The repository location
CVSROOT=/Users/me/cvsroot
The pc uses ssh to access the repository, and just need to have sshd running and cvs installed. The .bashrc of the pc contains the environment variables:
CVS_RSH=ssh
CVSROOT=:ext:me@nb-name:/Users/me/cvsroot/