Hello, I am hoping someone can point out to this lost soul where he's screwed up.
I've installed Deb. 2.2 onto a new system (Athlon) using the CD minimal install disk which gets me in with enough stuff to connect to the rest of the world... It's next to the old 486 box running 2.2.14 and a ppp line out. I've connected the two through COM 1 ports with a null modem cable (is this the mistake?), and have serial/SLIP/CSLIP in the kernels. The hosts file in the 486 (kaynjay) reads 127.0.0.1 localhost loopback 192.168.1.1 kaynjay.kenward.vaughan kaynjay 192.168.1.2 H_Potter.kenward.vaughan H_Potter at the top, with some Ip6 stuff underneath. Resolv.conf reads domain kenward.vaughan at the top with DNS info underneath for the modem. The Athlon box (H_Potter ... I've got kids :) resolv.conf file has search kenward.vaughan at the top and the same DNS stuff underneath (I'm Hoping to IP masq. out of the 486 eventually). Its hosts file has 127.0.0.1 localhost loopback 192.168.1.2 H_Potter.kenward.vaughan H_Potter Following the NETWORKING HowTo, I ran slattach -s 115200 /dev/ttyS0 & ifconfig sl0 192.168.1.1 pointopoint 192.168.1.2 on kaynjay, and the equivalent on H_Potter. Right now on kaynjay (with the modem up) ifconfig gives: lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:3924 Metric:1 RX packets:38 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:38 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol inet addr:63.196.173.47 P-t-P:63.196.172.5 Mask:255.255.255.255 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1514 Metric:1 RX packets:67 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:59 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:10 sl0 Link encap:VJ Serial Line IP inet addr:192.168.1.1 P-t-P:192.168.1.2 Mask:255.255.255.255 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:296 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 compressed:0 TX packets:5 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 compressed:0 txqueuelen:10 where I guess the TX packets:5 were the attempts to ping H_Potter. I can't ping either way, much less anything else. I'm quite uncertain about this whole procedure, as I get the feeling that I'm doing something blazingly wrong, but it is not clear to this non-geek hobbyist from the document what I Should be seeing. My goal at this point is to be able to transfer or directly use the potato debs on kaynjay. I recognize the obvious alternative (moving the HD over), but I'd never learn to network these things that way. If the cable is wrong, I can always use the printer cable and recompile for PLIP, yes?? Sorry for the long post. I'm weary now (way late here). I'd be grateful for any help, though. Kenward