Things To Download

I've taken the liberty of combining together a number of different submissions we've received. First off, Network Magic recently came out with a new version of their software (tour on link). It's Windows-based primarily, but having tested it out on Mac/Linux/Windows-mixed network, it's worth checking out. Another individual pointed out that SourceForge Enterprise is now a 15 seat free download; you can also grab the ISO in Torrent form. (SourceForge is made by the other arm of the company that owns Slashdot, VA Software). Lastly, a couple of folks seem to have rediscovered the joy of Audioscrobbler and sharing the stuff via last.fm. Fun stuff.

sourceforge?

[doti]

bleargh!

trac is much better. way cleaner and simpler interface, and _excelent_ integration with subversion.
also, it's free.

http://trac.edgewall.com/ [edgewall.com]

Re:Sourceforge

[tcopeland]

A fork of SourceForge - GForge [gforge.org] - is indeed free and open source. It's a bit painful to set up, but there are commercial support options [gforgegroup.com]. And there are lots of sites [gforge.org] out there that are using it...

Can you say more Non-Free than cheap beer?

[hackel]

Um...and just WHY would anyone be interested in downloading any of this non-free garbage? Especially Sourceforge. That was one shameful decision. One shouldn't even consider using it over free projects like Savane [gna.org], GForge [nongnu.org], or as someone already mentioned, Trac [edgewall.com].

This is Slashdot, after all, did we forget?

Okay, sorry, Last.fm is kind of free, but still they need to restore the ability to play an mp3 stream with the player of your choice, not just their clunky custom software.

Re:sourceforge?

[Anonymous Coward]

apt-get install trac

Re:Network Magic?

[wiredpasture]

Just bought a new wireless router from D-Link and it came with Network Magic in the box. Nowhere, not anywhere, did it say the product was not neccessary for the network. Instructions were seamless in their incorporation of Network Magic. As I'm installing, it pops up with the "free trial" offer. I immediately uninstalled it and am fine using Windows XP on 3 PCs and a storage device. No problemo...except for the sneaky marketing.

Re:sourceforge?

[PietjeJantje]

Good point. Another one is that it is crippleware which should be avoided like a plaque. Really, which project of volunteers is gonna pay for this kind of software. Now I'm not gonna judge anyone's business model or deny anyone an income, but preferring to leech volunteers over making their offering, JUST LIKE ANYONE ELSE, an unlimited open source licenced download.

One thing going for them is that with a 504MB download for what can't be more than a few MBs in code if you try really hard, surely pr0n is included to use as wallpapers for your project management. Cute!

Re:Network Magic?

[Com2Kid]

Your tale of woe lacks too many specific details, and your failure to mention some of those details only servs to show that you need to spend a lot more time up to your elbows in NICs, Cables, and protocols, before you can make any sweeping claims as to how well Windows Networking works.

Microsoft likes to advertise how "simple" it is to setup a Windows XP network.

If I need to spend that much time learning, then it isn't simple.

Anyways, I have spent oodles of time setting up networks, in my experience, when dealing with Windows, domains are a more reliable solution. This is not TOO surprising, given that Microsoft sells domain systems for money, while workgroups are just a convinenence feature for users who are not willing to fork over the cash for a DC.

Windows Firewall is set to allow Windows Filesharing to pass through on all machines, naturally enough. The protocol is whatever the little checkbox for "Enable Windows File Sharing" uses. Not NetBEUI anymore thankfully. :)

You did not mention the make of your NICs

Every machine is a laptop, so whatever Intel felt like. Not really configurable!

if your "hub" is a simple switch or a router...

No, it is a 10mb/s HUB. When I said hub I meant HUB. The damn thing costs $40 new TODAY, and I have no clue why. (I bought it back in 1997 or so)

I want to get a nice router, wireless preferabbly. My Machine C is operating as a Wireless Router for the network right now, and THAT works perfectly. Go figure. Windows makes it PRETTY easy (but not inntuitive, since some amount of stupidity is required...) to turn a machine into a wireless router. (Linux, in comparison, loses out HORRIBLY here. Windows has a checkbox you select that makes a machine into a wireless router, linux has 2 or 3 packages you download, install, and edit text based configuration files for...)

And yes, all my machines are set to disable WiFi when their NIC is plugged in. (well except for machine C of course, which just doesn't connect to anything since all the other machines, when their NICs are plugged in, just do not connect to it!)

Did you know that using certain 3com NICs can cause some linksys switches to shut down?

Yah, I had to fix that once. Drove me freaking nuts trying to diagnoise it. Very weird issue.

This example is to show you that your networking issues could be simply HARDWARE issues that you are unaware of.

Except that, as stated above, I have a hub. Hubs barely above electrical repeaters in level of complexity.

I have the world's second most simple network layout. 3 machines, plugged into HUB.

Unless one of the machines is horribly mangling Ethernet frames, I have a software issue.

Re:Network Magic?

[MrNougat]

I currently have three computers all running XP, all in the same workgroup and they can only access each other by IP address.

This is because NetBIOS browsing is (ahem) t3h suXX0r. It's never been dependable. If you want to browse by NetBIOS name (computername), you need to resolve that to an IP address. A WINS server can handle that for you. If you want to browse by hostname (FQDN), you'll need to resolve that to an IP address. An internal DNS server can handle that for you. But network browse lists on Windows machines are next to useless.

What's even worse is that neither WINS server nor DNS server are available in WinXP. So ... what you do instead on a small network is add entries to the LMHOSTS file (for NetBIOS resolution) for each computername and IP address, which can be found in %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc

Once that's done, when you try to lookup a NetBIOS name to IP address, the machine will check the LMHOSTS file before broadcasting. If it finds an entry, resolved, done and done.

Re:Network Magic?

[nutrock69]

I hope I didn't come across with any attitude in my reply, so I apologize if it came off that way. Having a degree in Computer Engineering, I am (unfortunately) very aware that even the simplest electronic/electric circuit can go bad - especially from age and use. Since most physics models choose to ignore it, wear-and-tear does not violate any law of physics that I know of.

What I was trying to show in my orig post is that I have a system that is in some ways similar to yours (multi-XP), and in other ways more complex (plus assorteds), and that it "just works" without special effort. I have actually had a hub go bad and seen the very same problems you're describing. The hub was about 5 years old and had been in near constant use since first plugged in. Logic tells me that if the software worked before the problem and the settings remained unchanged, then something must have changed outside of the software. After swapping NIC's and cables with no success replacing the hub fixed the problem. YMMV - just telling you what fixed a problem I had that was similar to yours.