External access and more

[kolaf]

Also, while I'm at it, how do I access the system from another computer on my LAN, i.e. with my own lLAN subnet 192.168.3.0, not on the MCE LAN of 192.168.80.0.  Specifically I wish to add systems to the web-server  such as smokeping, so I need external acces to see the pages.  Also, I read something about a windows orbiter, but that seems to be unavailable.  Howwould I go about getting vncserver to run at boot, or is there some other preffered method for external desktop access?

Actually, after trying for some time, I'm not even able to ping the system from another computer on my network, eveng when setting the ip address of the MCE system manually.  I had to do this since I was unable to get ifconfig to work, it reported it was not installed,  even though net-tools is installed.  Does this mean my installation is broken in some way?  So the basic question is, how do I get access to the system from another computer in my LAN, regardless of syste, ssh, vnc, web, etc.  I should probably also mention that the mCE system can accsess the network, so it is working.  Is it possible to just get rid of the internal network, 192.168.80.0 and only use my external lan network?

Furthermore I get numerous CIFS write/mount errors (using network shares), and when updating the system I get errors when running the final scripts such as Couldn't open /lib/modules/2.6.17-11-generic.  Is this bad?

Discovering media files on shares works well the first time, but on subsequent reboots the files are all gone, and the orbiter does not recognise video files on the DVD/CDs I feed it, even though the avi files are visible in konqurer and plays fine in xine.

This was a lot of disjoint questions, i hope someone has answers to at least some of them

[colinjones]

Just to address the simple and fundamental question about subnets. Like any environment where you have more than one subnet, you have to have a properly configured router for nodes on different subnets to communicate. This is true even if all nodes are on the same Ethernet broadcast domain (same switch/hub with no VLANs). When one device starts to send an IP packet, the first thing it does is compare the destination's subnet with its own. If they are the same (they are not in your case, as you pointed out), then it will do an ARP and attempt to deliver the Ethernet frame directly - point to point. If they are different it immediately defers to the "default gateway" as defined in your if/ipconfig/routing table and forwards the packet there for delivery. It doesn't matter that the Ethernet frame CAN physically get to the destination on the local LAN, the node (PC or LMCE) simply does not look at that. Thus you are entirely dependant on your router being able to route that packet back onto your local LAN to the destination. It has to have the right routing configuration to do this.

Simplest way - set all your devices to DHCP. LMCE will then allocate all nodes IP address leases on the same subnet, and this will eliminate any routing configuration you would otherwise have to do.

[kolaf]

Right, thanks for the reply.

I figured out some of my network problems, they were caused by me not reconnecting the ethernet cable after some cable reworking  .  I also figured out how to gain remote access to the Web server, it now only remains to find the correct apache configuration to edit.

As for the remaining questions, I still get CIFS errors, and ifconfig is still not working. 
I'm still not sure how to get vnc server to start at boot, or if there is another, better way to have some sort of remote Desktop, and the media files on my remote shares still disappear after the first reboot.

At least we are making progress