On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 17:43, Bob Proulx <b...@proulx.com> wrote: > Dotan Cohen wrote: > > >> Can I configure an FTP server locally, that would allow for easy > > >> connection via Windows Explorer, Konqueror, and Nautilus? I need the > > >> ability to transfer files in both directions. Thanks in advance for > > >> any ideas. > > MS-Windows machines have an ftp client by default. So you could > initiate a connection using the ftp client on MS. But MS does not > include an ftp daemon and so without installing something like > Cygwin's ftp deamon it would be difficult to symetrically have > connection ability both ways. But you could investigate Cygwin if you > needed that capability. If you can restrict to just always connecting > from the MS client then you can copy files both ways from that > client without needing to install anything else on the simple MS > clients. > > Also, if you have an Apache web server enabled then the clients can > pull files by http. That may be even simpler for your purpose than > using ftp. However that would be a one way copy only. Still might be > useful in that direction though. No encryption overhead from SSH. No > passwords. Just go. But you need to think about whether security is > required for those files or not. >
I think that, using a crossover ethernet connection between the two computers, network encryption does not matter much, at least in this case :) > > Also, as there is no router involved, how would the the "other" > > machine connect to my machine? Will I need to install a DHCP server? > > Can I assign a name to my laptop, so that the other machine could just > > connect to that name? > > Yes. If I were doing this I would install a DHCP server such as > dhcp3-server on my Debian machine and have it serve addressees for the > thin clients that are attached on the wire. Most simple MS client > machines are configured for DHCP and therefore they would be assigned > an address automatically at connection time and no reconfiguration of > them would be needed. > > However on your "server" machine you would probably need or want to > reconfigure for this configuration on and off as you needed it. You > might have a script that swaps configuration files between your two > configurations. Because you wouldn't want a dhcp server running on > the wire if you were to plug into a wired network yourself for normal > use as that would probably produce two dhcp servers there! Don't > break someone else's network! But if you turn things on and off only > as needed then you should be okay. > > Using dhcp would assign addresses. Use a private RFC1918 address > range such as 192.168.*.* and you can use the numbers to refer to your > server machine immediately. If you want to use a name then that is > more complicated. For that you would need to set up a DNS nameserver > on your machine that would serve that name to your dhcp clients. That > is certainly reasonable and relatively easy to do. You can use a > private domain name without needing to register it globally. > > There are lot of strong opinions about the best nameserver software. > Personally I would install bind9 and then set up a zone for a private > domain. Configure dhcp to tell clients to use your server for the > nameserver. Seems like it should work fine. > > > Thanks! I have been googling this all morning and I cannot believe > > that not many people have been in this situation before, it seems so > > commonplace. > > I think most people are satisfied with sneakernet using hard media for > transfer. But don't let that stop you. :-) > > Bob > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) > > iEYEARECAAYFAkqNbyMACgkQ0pRcO8E2ULYeFwCeL4vOYB2s03Sg/JLojB+ReClU > XrEAnRZErb1MkR0UdxzfDBULSijuHXWD > =MMHA > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > As Alexandre Rossi has already said, I would go with avahi and zeroconf setups. Best Regards, -- Jonás Andradas
