Re: PLIP and debian

["Felix E. Klee" <felix.klee@inka.de>]

In article <[🔎] 20010320132822.7954.qmail@awcst094.netaddress.usa.net>,
"Viktor Lakics" <lakicsv@usa.net> wrote:
> Hi All, Has anyone set up PLIP connection between two linux boxes? It
> would be neat to have this, especially useful for transferring data from
> your laptop to a desktop?
> 
> Any personal experience, or pointers are appreciated...

I sometimes use a Plip connection to connect computers, that don't have
network cards. However one problem that is plagueing me ist that after
using PLIP printing is very slow. 

To get started you need the PLIP and parport_pc kernel modules and need to
have turned on certain kernel options (see
/usr/doc/HOWTO/en-txt/mini/PLIP.txt.gz for details). If you get error
messages when loading the PLIP module, you need to create a file
/etc/modutils/parport_pc with the following contents and run
update-modules which recreates /etc/modules.conf:
    options parport_pc io=0x378 irq=7 # Works for most parports

To be able to start network connections, I added the following scheme to
/etc/network/interfaces (of course with a different address for each computer):
    # Plip connection to the local net
    scheme plip
            iface plip0 inet static
                    address 192.168.0.13
                    netmask 255.255.255.0
                    network 192.168.0.0
                    broadcast 192.168.0.255
                    pre-up modprobe -r plip parport_pc parport_probe parport 2>/dev/null; modprobe plip # Avoid some problems with initialization
                    up echo "1" >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
                    down echo "0" >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
                    post-down modprobe -r plip 2>/dev/null

Finally, to start a network connection, one has to execute
    ifup -s plip plip0

If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Regards,

Felix