A total idiot's progress in installing Pluto

I know very little Linux; I've installed a linux server before to serve a web forum; and have used Suse a tiny ammount. I can comfortably build PC's and am resonably confident in setting up simple home networks.

I'm just writing this as an aid memoire to myself; and hopefully it'll be helpful to the developers if a propper beginer's documentation needs to be written.

My current plan is to add Pluto as a server to my current network; to assess it's potential, and see what it can do; connected to a laptop that sits under my TV. So I'm not overly keen to use it between my current PC's and the internet; but happy enough to allow it to be a DCHP server; and my networked PC's have fixed IP's in any case

Right. Starting off; I installed the quickstart Cd and it ran a breeze.

The server really wanted an internet connection when booting up; so I needed to plug it into my router; after switching off my router's DCHP- and it seemed happy enough.

I was unaware that the real meat of setting up has to happen by logging into the pluto core from another PC. So to do that I removed the PC's fixed IP, and let it connect via DCHP.

Then I could log into 192.168.50.1 and use the username and password to get at the settings. This might all sound really basic; but I am a genuie novice.

I then changed the Pluto's IP from 192.168.50.1 to 192. 168.x.254; toget it working on my current network. But after doing this, it wasn't overly keen in supplying an IP address to the IP-less PC on the network.

And that's where I'm currently at.

So the next step- getting the DCHP server to work

Setting up the mac adress of my laptop to allow boot over Lan.

And then play with it and see how it works!