Can I take two computers (laptops both) and plug them together directly from one nic to another with a "standard" ethernet cable? Or do I need a crossover cable or something to do that? And if I have the correct cable, will the two machines do some sort of peer-to-peer networking more or less automagically or will it be difficult to set up? One runs FC2, the other Mac OS X 10.3.7.
You need crossover cable. You can buy one, or make one. If you need only this one cable, and never will need another cable again in your life, it might be cheaper to buy finished one. If you'd need to make another cable or two in foreseable future, it'll be much cheaper to buy a box of connectors, 50ft of cable and the tool that you need to attach connectors on the end of the cable. Finished cables are total rip off.
As for as configuration, you'd probably need to assign IP addresses manually.
On the Linux side, you can assign address temporary by doing something like this:
# ifconfig eth0 10.0.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
On MacOS X side, you can probably do something similar from shell prompt. Never worked with it, so I wouldn't know really.
-- Aleksandar Milivojevic <amilivojevic@xxxxxx> Pollard Banknote Limited Systems Administrator 1499 Buffalo Place Tel: (204) 474-2323 ext 276 Winnipeg, MB R3T 1L7
