Mint networking: Mintnet

Mint goes Networking

Networking on Mint can very simple as long as you know networking on Unix, because it follows closely the Unix implementation.

Things that you will need are:

• 1. The ethenet hardware and the driver for it. The driver is usually a XIF file. You need to check the availability of XIF file then get the hardware.

  2. ifconfig - the network interface configuration program

  3. route - the network routing program

  4. A bunch of text files that configures the networking environment that lives in the folder /etc

Assumptions here are

• • that you already have the ethernet hardware (Dayna SCSILink, EtherNEC, Hydra or others) and the XIF file for it.

  • Your Atari network card is attached to your Atari and is working (tested with the network hardware tools).

  • The Atari network card is connected to an network hub like a wireless access point either wirelessly (you never know) or wired. Your wireless access point is running DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) and is using the IP address range 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.0.255

  • no network device is using the address of 192.168.0.28, because we are going to use 192.168.0.28 on our Atari.

This guide starts with a detailed installation of the network on Mint, then short description on DHCP for Mint and mapping to a Windozes shared drive.

More generic information on home network here.

Installing Network on Mint

1. Extract utility program gzip and tar from gzip_tar.lzh

The utility program gzip and tar are needed to extract Unix archives. We can now place these utility program in the /bin folder so that we can use these command in the Unix shell that we installed previously.

1. 1. 1. 1. If the gzip_tar.lzh is not already downloaded, you can download it from here.

         2. Unlzh the gzip_tar.lzh using LHZARC or equivalent (Note the filename of the LZH file on LZHARC).

The 2 files - gzip and tar will be extracted and copy it into D:\bin folder. These 2 extracted files filename should be in lowercase.

1. 1. 1. 3. You need to make these 2 files executable from the Ext2 file system.

            1. • On the Teradesk desktop, single click to select gzip.

               • With gzip selected, press CTRL-I to bring out the FILE INFORMATION window.

               • Make the file gzip executable by ticking (enable) all the X column (executable bits). Click OK when done.

               • Do the same for the tar program.

2. Download and decompress the networking programs for MiNT

The ifconfig and route program files can be obtained from the Mint-NET package, which contains everything you need for networking on Atari.

1. 1. 1. 1. Download the Mint-Net package using your PC and transfer it to your Atari Ext2 file system (Drive D:). It's a gziped TAR file.

         2. You can now decompress the package using the gzip tool you placed in D:\bin, from the command shell.

            1. • Run the Unix shell by double clicking tcsh in the D:\bin folder. There are no need to enter any parameters.

               • Make sure you are at the /d drive in the shell, enter the following command and press ENTER to run it.

cd /d

1. 1. 1. 2. 1. • To decompress the package, enter the following command and press ENTER to run it.

gzip -d /d/net-1.04b.tgz

1. 1. 1. 2. 1. • Check that the package is decompressed to net-1.04b.tar in the D: drive.

         3. Decompress the archive net-1.04b.tar from the Unix shell by entering the following command and press ENTER to run it.

tar xpf /d/net-1.04b.tar

1. 1. 1. 4. The folder net-1.04b will be created in D: drive and all your networking tools will be inside.

3. Move the networking files to the correct locations

The networking programs are normally located in /sbin (D:/sbin) and the configuration files in /etc (D:/etc).

So we need to place them in the correct folders for networking to work.

• 1. 1. 1. Create the folder D:\sbin if it's not there. You can use Teradesk for this. Make sure that the folder name is lower case.

        2. Using Teradesk, copy everthing in the folder D:\net-1.04b\tool to D:\sbin folder.

        3. Make sure the programs in D:\sbin are executable ( follow procedures in step (1.3) above to make files executable).

        4. Using Teradesk, copy everthing in the folder D:\net-1.04b\etc to D:\etc folder.

4. Installing the XIF driver file

• • • 1. Copy the XIF file into the Mint system folder (SYSDIR).

      2. Copy INET.XDD into the Mint system folder (SYSDIR).

5. Configure the /etc networking environment files

Modify the following files in your /etc folder to work in your environment. Those copied from the net-1.04b folder will not work without modifications. You can download them from this website but change them to suite your network.

They can be edited by any editor like QED.

1. /etc/domainname contains the domain name. Change to your liking.

2. /etc/hostname contains the hostname of the computer. Change to your liking.

3. /etc/resolve.conf the domain name and the name server ip address. Should get this from your ISP.

copy the following files in your /etc folder. They can used as it. Do not modify.

• • • 1. /etc/services This file contains the well known port addresses of internet services

      2. /etc/protocols This file contains the available protocol on this system

• • • 3. You can download these files from here. 

      4. You may change the contents of domainname and hostname according to your home network. 

      5. You may need to change the nameserver in side the file resolve.conf  to the IP Address of your router if 8.8.8.8 ( Google DNS) don't work.

6. Configure the network setting

The network interface configuration program, ifconfig, is used to bind the IP address for your computer to the network adapter.

• 1. 1. 1. Run the command shell by double clicking D:\BIN\TSCH, just click OK if you're asked to enter some parameters.

        2. Change directory (this is Unix talk, in Atari talk it is called folder) to /d/sbin by typing cd /d/sbin.

        3. To start networking, enter the command at the command shell by typing

./ifconfig  en0  addr  192.168.0.28  netmask  255.255.255.0  up

ifconfig is the interface configuration program.

en0 is the interface name and is defined by the XIF file so is different between adapters.

addr 192.168.0.28 is the IP address of the computer (depends on your home network IP range).

netmask 255.255.255.0 is the subnet mask, and is based on the IP address.

up activates the interface.

7. Configure the network routing

Once the network is up, you will have to setup the routing table so that Mint knows how to route network packages to on the wire.

This can be done by the command route. On the command shell, type

./route add default en0 gw 192.168.0.1 metric 1

route the name of the interface routing program.

add default add the default route so everything goes via this.

en0 is the network interface name (as defined by the XIF file).

gw 192.168.0.1 is the network gateway IP address to the Internet.

metric 1 is the priority of this route/pathway.

If your gateway/router does not route back internal IP address, you may add an extra routing command to enable communication between computers in the same subnet. This can be easily done as follows

./route add 192.168.0.0 en0

DHCP for Mint

DHCP is available for Mint. It can be found as DHCP client RPM package in the SpareMint archive. With it, you do not need to do any network configuration manually. Installation of it is easy, just run the RPM package. No configuration is required for the DHCP client. After installing it, you will need to remove the 2 network commands ifconfig and route from the MINT.CNF file. Otherwise there may be dificulties binding the hardware adapter to your system. Make sure that DHCP server is running on your home network, and as stated above, will be normally available in your wireless access point.

Mapping a Windows shared drive

Mint can easily maps a Windows shared drives by using SharityLight and NFS. SharityLight can be found as a RPM package in the SpareMint archive. You can read about it in the page Atari Net Use to access Windows shared folders.

Next:  06 Mint and RPM