Well my neighbor wants me to teach him some linux, while I can do SSH stuff on a server I wanted to create a local environment for him to experiment on.

Would it be possible to setup an old desktop PC , put linux on it then connect that to a Win XP desktop with a crossover cable through the NICs. Then allow him to SSH from the Win xp machine to the "dummy server".

I think this would be the best way for him to learn since it would be easy to do an operating re install if necessary.

Any ideas or tips would be helpful as I am not completely sure this will work or not

Derrick

No reason why it won't work. A cross over cable simply negates the need for a hub.

You could also put the cygwin libraries onto XP to allow him to get farmiliar with the *nix environment.

i did this, but im unable to have both computers see eachother on the network.

XP would connect to the internet directly
Linux box holds all the test sites, and connects to the internet via the windows platform

any help?

What type of internet connection is being used? i assume it is a dialup connection due to the use of the crossover cables between the two machines?

yup, its a dial-up connection, and Im not using a crossover connection, instead Im using a switch port to connect both boxes

Just doing a simple ICS on the windows XP machine should let the linux machine access the internet. The linux machine would not need to parse windows xp commands, it would simply pick up a DHCP address and ip address from the windows xp machine.

1) Turn on ICS on Windows XP
2) Go to linux box and set it to obtain the ip address

The boxes shouldn't actually need to see eachother for this to work.

they dont? i thought that they would at least be able to ping each other's IPs?? and, whats ICS? :)

They will be able to ping eachother local IP addresses.

ICS = Internet Connection Sharing

It's a feature built into XP.

Note that ICS will make your Windows computer have the local IP address of 192.168.0.1 -- if there is anything else on your network that is using that network address (most hubs use that address), then ICS will fail (XP with SP2 will warn you about this, iirc).

Once you have setup ICS in Windows XP, then simply set up the Linux box to configure the network card using DHCP (and optionally, set the default gateway to 192.168.0.1)

You should be set then.

You have installed linux and and simply want your neighbour to ssh into your machine as a user!!

Tell him to use a ssh tool like putty and use the ip of your NIC interface. Hope this is what you are looking for ;)

i'm gonna give this a try and get back to you guys with the result... thanks for the help! :)