[wellylug] direct cable connection

[Sam Vilain]

On Wed, 2008-09-24 at 23:35 +1200, Ray Smith wrote:
> Hello all,
> I'm trying to establish a direct connection form an Xbox to an Ubuntu
> machine using a cross-over cable. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to
> begin to setup the connection. The Ubuntu box is networked via a
> wireless card from DSE. THe card was supported out of the box and
> networked with no problems. THe on board LAN on the mobo appears to be
> recognized by the OS, but I can't establish a connection. Any ideas?

You need to establish IP networking between them.  They need IP
addresses which have the same network, and a different address.

eg, one machine could be:
   IP: 192.168.1.3    netmask: 255.255.255.0

the other one:
   IP: 192.168.1.4    netmask: 255.255.255.0

Basically all of the numbers with "255" in the netmask need to be the
same, and at least one with "0" needs to be different.  Then you should
be able to use "ping" between them.  ie, ping the other machine's
address.

If you can manually configure the xbox's IP address and netmask, you can
use this approach.  If you can't, then you'll need install and configure
a DHCP server on the Ubuntu box (install the 'dhcpd' package, and
probably find a HOWTO or relevant docs).

Set it on the Ubuntu box using network manager, or:

  ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.4 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

The above command is a nice temporary way of doing it that won't survive
a reboot.

Of course a much simpler approach to all of this is if you have some
kind of router, that you might use to connect to your broadband.  Then
you'd just plug them all in, they'll all just autoconfigure and you can
ping between them etc.

Sam.