CS 4396 - Lab 1 Notes

The equipment in our lab is configured a little different from
what is described in the book. The book assumes that we use the
physical Linux PCs for the lab. For the first lab, we (the
instructor) is expected to build the network and configure the
PCs with proper IP addresses.

However, the lab PCs are configured a little different in our
lab. Instead of using the physical Linux PCs in the lab, each
student will use vmware based virtual Linux PCs. The
instructions at
http://www.utd.edu/~kxs028100/cnlab/lab-config.htm explains how
you will be copying vmware based virtual Linux PCs into your
personalized directory on the physical PCs. In this class, you
will be using those virtual Linux PCs for your labs.

Our lab book assumes that the PCs are equipped with two
Ethernet NIC cards. The physical PCs have one on-board and two
other Ethernet cards. When you look at the back of the PCs, you
will see toward the bottom of the case two Ethernet cards
labeled as ETH0 and ETH1. These are the two Ethernet cards that
are configured to be used in our labs. The third Ethernet card
(the one mounted on the main board of the PC) is not used in
our labs and you should not be disconnecting the network cables
on these cards.

The virtual Linux PCs are created in a way that they will use
the two Ethernet ports (ETH0 and ETH1) as the two Ethernet
cards connected to themselves.

Now, for Lab 1, the book assumes that we (the instructor) are
the ones who configures the PCs with proper IP addresses to be
used for the lab. However, given that each student has his own
virtual Linux PC and given that the instructor does not have
access to those PCs, they are not yet configured to be used for
lab 1. Therefore, you will need to configure the IP addresses
of each of the four virtual Linux PC as follow:

1. Start an X terminal
2. Run the following commands at prompt
    On set1pc1: ifconfig eth0 10.0.1.11 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.0.1.255
    On set1pc2: ifconfig eth0 10.0.1.12 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.0.1.255
    On set1pc3: ifconfig eth0 10.0.1.13 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.0.1.255
    On set1pc4: ifconfig eth0 10.0.1.14 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.0.1.255

Once you complete the above configuration, you should be ready
to start the exercises in Lab 1.

Note that if you are using the second set of equipment, you are
working with PCs set2pc1 - set2pc4 instead of set1pc1 -
set1pc4.

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Below are several issues related to our lab setup which may
affect you during Lab 1.

1. Telnet/FTP are not available in vmware systems. Please use
ssh/scp instead.


2. All VM's default to PC2 for the host name

After running the /vmsource/cs4396.sh and starting up the VM on
each of the four PC's in set one we found that they all had PC2
as the default host name.

This is easy to fix as one of the lab questions was "How do you
change the Linux PC's name?". Just modified
/etc/sysconfig/network by setting "HOSTNAME=PCX" where X was
the PC number. For this to take affect, you need to restart the
VM.


3. ifconfig is not persistant through VM restart

The configuration for eth0 done by using ifconfig command does
not persist through VM restart. This means anytime you start up
the VM, you will have to run the command again.

4. Ethereal is deprecated and replaced with wireshark. Please
use wireshark instead of ethereal in your lab.

Thanks to Russell Durham for bringing these issues to my
attention.

5. On the physical machines (setXpcX), if you cannot run any
linux shell commands successfully, please make sure that your
PATH variable is set properly and includes /bin and /use/bin
directories in it. If not, add them using
    export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin