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On Thursday 17 February 2005 5:50 pm, Julian Hall wrote:
I remember coming to grief with this previously. Basically I want to set up NFS shares between the desktop and laptop.
That's problematic over wired connections - we've been there before with the NFS not being unmounted cleanly before the machine is turned off or put in standby - now you want to do this over wireless?? Reconsider NFS, it probably isn't worth the hassle. You'll have boxes going down all over the place. To use NFS, you must put systems in place that cleanly unmount the NFS drive before either machine is turned off or put into standby. Generally, I'd recommend using scripts that only mount the NFS drive immediately before the files are needed and then immediately unmount the drive. When you've got a static IP for the NFS host AND both host and client are going to be running for a long while, NFS is perfect. I use it all the time for precisely this purpose. However, this is for the server and the desktop on a wired connection - BOTH have been running non-stop for a minumum of 2 months.
The router however states in the documentation it requires DHCP for the wireless to work correctly.
But that does not mean you cannot use static names for certain connections. To ping a box, you must be able to resolve the hostname to an IP address. Now you can get into all kinds of clever dynamic DNS to get around this, but the easiest and most efficient method is simply to set each machine that needs a hostname to have a static IP. That's ifconfig on GNU/Linux and somewhere in the depths of Network something on Windows. You can have the NFS host (natalie?) on a static IP and then your only concerns are enforcing an absolute ban on shutting down the laptop without unmounting the NFS drive. Unfortunately, as you've got Windows on that laptop, a reboot cannot be ruled out and this can cause problems. :-( Why not use Samba? That doesn't rely on NFS.
Pinging rachel from the desktop gives 'unknown host' and this is where I hit a brickwall last time if memory serves. However last time with a wired network and only two machines active on it I had the luxury of setting up static IPs on both machines.
Static is not a luxury on an internal network, only on an internet connection. Static is the most common on an internal network and is all but essential if you want to connect between the boxes - SSH, FTP, HTTP, email etc.
Now my Dad has my old laptop running Win2K on wireless, so a) I can't use static IPs and b) now I have no control over what order the PCs get switched on.
Your wireless router may need DHCP to be enabled for wireless, but are you sure that NO static IP can be over wireless? That's limiting.
Therefore I can't for example put an entry in /etc/fstab of: rachel:/home/julian /mnt/rachel nfs
That will fail only because you can't resolve the hostname. Hostnames don't go over the network, that's the IP. You must always be able to resolve a hostname to an IP address.
In the first instance it can't resolve who/where rachel is and in the second instance rachel may not always have the same IP address. Needless to say I can't enter anything into the hosts file to tell the system rachel (or my Dad's machine penyfan for that matter) are on specific IPs when they may not be in a day's time. Is using NFS dead in the water as I suspect?
Without dynamic DNS and careful scripting, I'd reconsider your options. Why haven't you done this in Samba? -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.dcglug.org.uk/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/ http://www.neil.williamsleesmill.me.uk/ http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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