Hi I have decided to buy a cheap PC laptop and run Linux on it. I was going to buy a Mac laptop - being a Mac fan, but I can get a second hand PC laptop with higher specs cheaper than a Mac one. And as it is going to run Linux it doesn't matter. I have been told IBM Thinkpads are good for Linux can anyone recommend anything in particular? Also I want to buy a wireless PCMCIA card that will work on a laptop and under Linux, any suggestions? Kind Regards Simon Royal ---- www.simonroyal.co.uk The box said requires Windows 2000 or better, so I bought an Apple Mac
On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 12:01:03PM +0100, Simon Royal wrote:
I have been told IBM Thinkpads are good for Linux can anyone recommend anything in particular?
What's your budget? This will make a *huge* difference, also do you want a "normal" laptop or a ultra-portable type? I recently purchased a brand new thinkpad X32 on ebay for 600 quid which came with a wireless card pre-installed. That deal also included a CD-rom drive+case+port replicator and some other bits. If you are looking at the 200-300 quid mark then a T20 series would be a likely candidate (and at the lower end of that amount of dosh) they come with Pentium III cpus from 700Mhz to 1.13Ghz in some of the T23s and truely were excellent machines. If you have more then a T40 series would be excellent as would an X30 series (the X series is more "portable" so they don't come with built in CD or DVD drives). The other stuff, R and A series are a bit lower end with regard to construction so personally I'd not bother with them.
Also I want to buy a wireless PCMCIA card that will work on a laptop and under Linux, any suggestions?
Depends on how much you spend on the laptop really ;) Of course the Linux Emporium now sell wireless cards specifically that work with Linux see http://www.linuxemporium.co.uk/products/wireless/ for more. Thanks Adam -- jabberid = quinophex@jabber.earth.li AFFS || http://www.affs.org.uk/ || Not a filesystem
I have recently aquired a network printer. My computer (A) has two network ports eth0 and eth1. Eth0 is connected to a router and so is another computer (B). The printer is connected with a cross-over ethernet cable direct to eth1. I can ping and print from A to the printer. I can ping from B to the eth1 port on A, and get a response, but pinging from B to the printer gets no response at all. There is a software firewall on computer A but disabling that makes no difference. Eth0, Computer A, Computer B and the router are on 192.168.1.n and eth1 and the printer are on 192.168.2.n. To say that I'm not a network expert would be the understatement of the year so could I have some suggestions please regarding what I should do to get this working? Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain
On Thu, Apr 27, 2006 at 01:14:09PM +0000, Barry Samuels wrote:
To say that I'm not a network expert would be the understatement of the year so could I have some suggestions please regarding what I should do to get this working?
The simplest suggestion would be to connect everything on the same network, what is your reason for not doing this? The reason that B can't see the printer on the network attached to A is that it doesn't know that the network is there, you will need to tell it (at this point I still suggest you put everything on the same network) Otherwise you will need to setup machine A to do ip fowarding (from memory the magic is echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ip_forward) Then you will need to add a static route to machine B so it knows how to find the printer (i'm assuming linux so something like...) route add 192.168.2.0 gw 192.168.1.blah (ip address of the other machine) should do it. Thanks Adam -- jabberid = quinophex@jabber.earth.li AFFS || http://www.affs.org.uk/ || Not a filesystem
On 2006.04.27 21:45, Adam Bower wrote:
On Thu, Apr 27, 2006 at 01:14:09PM +0000, Barry Samuels wrote:
To say that I'm not a network expert would be the understatement of the year so could I have some suggestions please regarding what I should do to get this working?
The simplest suggestion would be to connect everything on the same network, what is your reason for not doing this?
Because there is physically no room on the eth0 network to connect anything else and my main machine has a spare network interface socket - eth1 so I have connected the printer directly to that.
The reason that B can't see the printer on the network attached to A is that it doesn't know that the network is there, you will need to tell it (at this point I still suggest you put everything on the same network)
Otherwise you will need to setup machine A to do ip fowarding (from memory the magic is echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ip_forward)
That is set to 1.
Then you will need to add a static route to machine B so it knows how to find the printer (i'm assuming linux so something like...)
route add 192.168.2.0 gw 192.168.1.blah (ip address of the other machine)
should do it.
Yes I managed to work that out but I still cannot ping the printer so I've assumed I must be doing something wrong or there is something obvious I haven't though of doing.
Thanks Adam
-- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain
On Thu, 2006-04-27 at 21:09 +0000, Barry Samuels wrote:
Yes I managed to work that out but I still cannot ping the printer so I've assumed I must be doing something wrong or there is something obvious I haven't though of doing.
Install traceroute if you don't have it already. traceroute 'ipaddress of printer' and post it here along with output of route on machine B I think at least one of those will narrow it down. At the back of my mind I can't help thinking that because we are not masquerading on machine A we need to tell the printer about how to get back to the network on the first card. On your printers IP config in the jetdirect menu there is an option to set the default gateway, this in your case should be the address of the network card the printer is plugged into on machine A
On 2006.04.27 23:29, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Thu, 2006-04-27 at 21:09 +0000, Barry Samuels wrote:
Yes I managed to work that out but I still cannot ping the printer so I've assumed I must be doing something wrong or there is
something obvious I haven't though of doing.
Install traceroute if you don't have it already.
traceroute 'ipaddress of printer' and post it here along with output of route on machine B
I think at least one of those will narrow it down.
At the back of my mind I can't help thinking that because we are not masquerading on machine A we need to tell the printer about how to get back to the network on the first card.
On your printers IP config in the jetdirect menu there is an option to set the default gateway, this in your case should be the address of the network card the printer is plugged into on machine A
That was part of the problem. The gateway on the printer wasn't set and setting that means that when I now ping the printer from Computer B I get a reply. BUT... If I try to print from computer B the job isn't sent and the status is 'waiting for (printer IP) to come up'. Traceroute gets as far as computer A but then I get lines of asterisks. Do I need any sort of routing on computer A? Incidentally what do I have to do to make the route I've added on computer B become permanent rather than add it every time the computer is booted? I really don't have a need for more network ports at the moment and I'd rather make use of the ports I have than spend another £25.00. I suppose I'll get there in the end but it becomes pretty frustrating at times. Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain
The traceroute problem mentioned in the previous post was caused by the firewall which has now been updated. Traceroute lists computer A as line 1 then the printer as line 2. Computer B still won't send the print job though. Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain
On Fri, 2006-04-28 at 11:38 +0000, Barry Samuels wrote:
The traceroute problem mentioned in the previous post was caused by the firewall which has now been updated.
Traceroute lists computer A as line 1 then the printer as line 2.
Computer B still won't send the print job though.
Still sounds very much like a firewally thing to me. Out of interest are you able to access the Jetdirect web admin page from Computer B ? You could also try opening a telnet session to the printers port (9100 I think) Try telnet printeraddress 9100 It won't do anything useful of course (unless you can speak Jetdirect IP protocol) but it will either fail to connect if it's a firewall issue or either print garbage on the screen or just sit there blank if it's ok. Compare this to the results you get if you do the same thing on Computer A
On Thu, Apr 27, 2006 at 09:09:11PM +0000, Barry Samuels wrote:
Because there is physically no room on the eth0 network to connect anything else and my main machine has a spare network interface socket - eth1 so I have connected the printer directly to that.
Consider upgrading the eth0 connected network to have more ports, you could always get hold of a switch and daisy chain it onto this network. Thanks Adam -- jabberid = quinophex@jabber.earth.li AFFS || http://www.affs.org.uk/ || Not a filesystem
On 4/27/06, Adam Bower <adam@thebowery.co.uk> wrote:
On Thu, Apr 27, 2006 at 09:09:11PM +0000, Barry Samuels wrote:
Because there is physically no room on the eth0 network to connect anything else and my main machine has a spare network interface socket - eth1 so I have connected the printer directly to that.
Consider upgrading the eth0 connected network to have more ports, you could always get hold of a switch and daisy chain it onto this network.
Even Cambridge's favourite WOC is selling 8 port switches for £25, and this will give you spare ports for more computers, wireless access points, games consoles, etc. Tim.
i just bought a dell inspiron 2200 from www.dell.co.uk/outlet/ for £299 or so. at the moment they are doing free delivery and |£55 quid off of all systems. keep checking here as the stock availiable seems to change every hour or so. With regards to wireless capability ndiswrapper is a godsend and allows you to use windows drivers for otherwise unsupported wireless chipsets. running on ubuntu it has handled any broadcom chip i have thrown at it. Rick
On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 12:01 +0100, Simon Royal wrote:
I have been told IBM Thinkpads are good for Linux can anyone recommend anything in particular?
Thinkpads are good. Not just for Linux...They are good...period. There is a notable exception with the "i" series machines...Avoid these if you can.
Also I want to buy a wireless PCMCIA card that will work on a laptop and under Linux, any suggestions?
Many of the more recent machines will have an internal Mini-PCI slot..if you can use this then it is a much more attractive option (no ugly card hanging out the side and better reception from the antenna wrapped around the screen) Sadly IBM block all but a few Mini_PCI vendor ID's in their BIOS so you need either an approved card (mine has an atheros card that works 100% in Linux using Ubuntu restricted modules package) or a bios hack to use something else....If you need an approved card then I can get them for you. Mine is an R series (specifically an R40 P4M 2.0Ghz) The R series are more of a low end desktop replacement than a road warrior machine... However I have been very pleased with mine and Gnome is lovely on a 1400x1200 screen. Lenovo have recently been building Thinkpads under license from IBM...But you would need to be buying new or very nearly new to get one of these...Personally I don't think the build quality is quite up to the IBM standard...but they are still nice machines and are much cheaper now...Entry level is around £400-£450 + VAT
participants (6)
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Adam Bower -
Barry Samuels -
Ricky Bruce -
Simon Royal -
Tim Green -
Wayne Stallwood