Samba Network will not work without Router

[speed32219]

Ok, I have been pulling my hair out and I found that unless I have the router/Gateway connected to the my network it does not work. (Been working for over a year with the router)
1 XP PC
4 Ubuntu PC's

If all the devices are connected through a local switch without a router/gateway I can not access files between machines. They just can't find each other unless I connect up a wired connection to a Gateway/Router and then everything is just fine. I need some advice.

All machines are set with a staic IP and assigned to Workgroup and configured with Samba/smb (I also started installing NFS for the Ubuntu Pc's but haven't configured that just yet). Now the problem might be and I have removed it and re-insertd it to no avil is the gateway address of 192.168.1.1, and all PC's have static IP's of 192.168.1.100-110. When they were MS devices I don't think I had this issue, just don't remeber, its been awhile.

[doas777]

sounds almost like the hosts are on differant vlans. what kinda switch do you have?

also can they ping eachother, and are you connecting by name or IP. if name, what kind of nameserver, and where on your network?

[LMZKJ]

It does sound like a name server issue. Do you have host files configured with the name/IP addresses of each machine? If you don't have a DNS server configured, this would let you communicate by name across all machines.

[speed32219]

Ping - Network is unreachable.

When I configured the SW on the Ubuntu machines, they were connected to the Dlink Gateway/router. Name server was not installed (Network just came up as part of the Ubuntu installation), just basic networking at the time and each madhine has a unique name (Vids-server, station1, station2, statioin3, etc.). I am now trying to set a basic network up and add a wireless device to the server and use it as a Gateway/bridge (for the other PC's) if I can do that. Most these PC's do not require Internet access, they are just front ends for an HTPC setup. That is if I can drop the wired connection to the Gateway/Router, I have to run a 100' cable all the time to keep them up and running. Wifie says it has to go, and its to hot to go into the roof and run it. LOL!

So first things first, I need to get a working network between these machnies for file sharing.

[doas777]

Ping - Network is unreachable.

When I configured the SW on the Ubuntu machines, they were connected to the Dlink Gateway/router. Name server was not installed (Network just came up as part of the Ubuntu installation), just basic networking at the time. I am now trying to set a basic network up and add a wireless device to the server and use it as a Gateway/bridge (to the other PC's) if I can do that. Most these PC's do not require Internet access, they are just front ends for an HTPC setup. That is if I can drop the wired connection to the Gateway/Router, I have to run a 100' cable all the time to keep them up and running. Wifie says it has to go, and its to hot to go into the roof and run it. LOL!

So first things first, I need to get a working netowrk between these machnies for file sharing.

what do you get from

ifconfig
route
cat /etc/interfaces

on one of the affected hosts?

[speed32219]

I am reading this off a machine and retyping into a machine that has internet access, so bear with me. Also, I can ping now, the cable on the Dlink switch was half out, The palstic cable clip is broken from me connecting and disonnecting. sorry.

ifconfig - inet addr: 192.168.1.109 Bcast 192.168.1.255 Mask 255.255.255.0

route Kernel routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.0.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 Eth0

cat /etc/interfaces - No such file or directory

Ubuntu 8.10 2.6.27-14-generic

Thank you for your help. I probably need to take a class on Networking for Dummies.

[redmk2]

I am reading this off a machine and retyping into a machine that has internet access, so bear with me. Also, I can ping now, the cable on the Dlink switch was half out, The palstic cable clip is broken from me connecting and disonnecting. sorry.

ifconfig - inet addr: 192.168.1.109 Bcast 192.168.1.255 Mask 255.255.255.0

route Kernel routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.0.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 Eth0

cat /etc/interfaces - No such file or directory

This should be /etc/network/interfaces

Ubuntu 8.10 2.6.27-14-generic

Thank you for your help. I probably need to take a class on Networking for Dummies.

There is no need for a gateway or the setting of a default route if this is a LAN only based network.

You need to have all of the hosts in the 192.168.1.(1-254) range. If you have a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 along with the appropriate IP address that will take care of the addressing. Then you need to setup DNS via hosts files or other means.

EDIT: All the hosts should be interconnected by a common switch. No router is needed as they are all on the same subnet

[doas777]

This should be /etc/network/interfaces

quite right, sorry bout that.

ok, so your showing that you have an IP for your internal network, and that traffic for 192.168.1.0/24 goes out over eth0. basically, everything looks like it should work.

now back to names vs addresses. can you ping if you use the IP address instead of hostnames? I think your router may be acting as a dns server. if you can ping by IP, then we know that the issue is name-based.

[redmk2]

I think your router may be acting as a dns server...

And probably the switch as well. The multiple ports on SOHO routers are really to a internal switch (L2) device.

[speed32219]

cat /etc/network/interfaces
auto lo
if lo inet loopback

#The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.109
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.1
broadcast 192.168.1.255

I can only ping by IP addresses. If I ping by name I get unknown host Vids-server. If I ping by name on the machine I am using it works, accross the network nothing. By the way, I am using just a dumb Dlink 5 port switch.