Cheap home network

Triad-X · 18 Jul 2008 at 17:52

Howdy people,

I'm going to be a bit vague with details for now since I'm still at work...but basically, I'm wanting to know what I would need to create a cheap network at home to practice using shell commands on a Linux computer.

I have my main gaming computer etc....and a salvaged computer which is operational that I wish to connect up and use as a server computer for webhosting/mysql/php/apache etc. Both have ethernet ports...but I guess I need a kind of router and such to emulate the desired effect to practice on.

Not sure what other details to give at this current moment in time.

tolien · 18 Jul 2008 at 17:58

A switch would be plenty to connect the two machines together, or even just a cable from one machine to the other.

swinnie · 18 Jul 2008 at 18:00

tolien said:
A switch would be plenty to connect the two machines together, or even just a cable from one machine to the other.

If using the cable between two computers you will need a Cross Over Cable.

tolien · 18 Jul 2008 at 18:19

Not if at least one of the machines was made in the last half-decade or so, but either crossover or straight-through qualifies as a cable.

queamin · 18 Jul 2008 at 18:56

tolien said:
Not if at least one of the machines was made in the last half-decade or so, but either crossover or straight-through qualifies as a cable.

Didn't know that,i thought you still needed a crossover

NicNac · 18 Jul 2008 at 19:37

why not try looking at a virtual machine of some sort. would save on the electric bills and I think some of the software to do this is free

edscdk · 19 Jul 2008 at 22:15

Like nicnac said maybe worth looking at virtual machine's.... looking at your sig you have a good enough machine.. I'm not to sure what free vm software there is, I know you can use VMWARE's workstation software for 30days free - the VMWare player (to run the machines) is free - the workstation software is about £120 I use it at work for servers etc works well... (and its easy)

Rainmaker · 20 Jul 2008 at 01:24

VMWare server is free, and it allows you to create and run as many VMs as you like with no limits. Another good one is VirtualBox - recently bought out from Innotek by Sun. Either would let you do what you want to do without paying any extra on the electric bill. I use VMs for testing out and playing with Linux server stuff all the time

K.C. Leblanc · 20 Jul 2008 at 01:31

If you are going to set them both up using a crossover cable of a switch then you will either need to give them static IP addresses or set on of them up as a DHCP server.

Routers tend to have built in DHCP servers.

But I'd try virtualisation,