Should I change the workgroup name on LinuxMCE?

[sincityharley]

I'm kind of confused because I was under the impression that to share files across a network all computers needed to be on the same workgroup. The one is MCE is different from my home network. I also thought that MCE would auto configure itself to access my network and all my shared files on the other computers. So either way if I am supposed to change the workgroup name or not how do I then setup MCE to be able to access my network? Thanks in advance for any help.

[Marie.O]

You should not change the workgroup. I am not sure, if it is hardcoded somewhere, but there is not need for it anyhow.

If your other PCs are on the internal network of your core, the core will find them, no matter what the workgroup. (It is always funny, if a friend visits me with his notebook, he connects to my Wifi network, and all of a sudden, LinuxMCE asks me, if I want to use his shares)

rgds
Oliver

[sincityharley]

So why doesnt my MCE see my other computers? I have media on my other computers that MCE hasnt indicated that it has found. They are all plugged into the same Linksys router. Any ideas what I should be looking at to fix this issue? Thanks again

[johanr]

Connected to the internal or external network?

Dhcp on or off?

if off go to wiki and search for dhcp
if external interface, plug it into internal. or read wiki (there really are Alot of info in there)

-johan
(I usually google for the question with linuxmce in the search and it gets me to the wiki..)

[sincityharley]

DHCP is on. The network section indicates this:

XTERNAL_IFACE     eth0
EXTERNAL_MAC    00:13:D3:C8:DF:31
EXTERNAL_IP    192.168.1.138
EXTERNAL_NETMASK    255.255.255.0
EXTERNAL_DHCP    1
INTERNAL_IFACE    eth1
INTERNAL_MAC    00:13:D3:C8:DF:32
INTERNAL_IP    192.168.80.1
INTERNAL_NETMASK    255.255.255.0
GATEWAY    192.168.1.1
DNS1    192.168.1.1
DNS2    192.168.1.1

My MCE box has dual on board nics (not sure if that helps)

What i dont understand is the whole external/interface and plugging it in one as opposed to the other. Could you explain in further detail?
I am scouring the net as I write this looking for answers this forum came about as one of my Google searches

[Marie.O]

DHCP is on. The network section indicates this:
[..]
EXTERNAL_IP    192.168.1.138
INTERNAL_IP    192.168.80.1

What i dont understand is the whole external/interface and plugging it in one as opposed to the other. Could you explain in further detail?
I am scouring the net as I write this looking for answers this forum came about as one of my Google searches

Do you windows machine have an IP address in the range of 192.168.1.x or 192.168.80.x?

rgds
Oliver

[sincityharley]

I have one windows PC and one SUSE box both with IP's of 192.168.1.*

[Zaerc]

Put them on the internal network where they'll get 192.168.80.X IP addresses, and the shares should get detected automaticly.

[colinjones]

What i dont understand is the whole external/interface and plugging it in one as opposed to the other. Could you explain in further detail?
I am scouring the net as I write this looking for answers this forum came about as one of my Google searches

Its very straight forward - any equipment you want LMCE to work with/know about goes on the internal network, that is the entire point and single purpose for it. Anything you are absolutely certain you will never need LMCE to touch may go on the external network if you wish. However, why bother? Why not just put everything on the internal network? This is where LMCE looks for stuff. Then you can plug your external NIC straight into your broadband modem/router, and your "external" network is very trivial indeed!

BUT most critically, the comments above about DHCP were talking about whether your PC and SUSE box are set to request DHCP leases (as opposed to statically assigned), not about whether the core is getting a DHCP address from your external network. Your PCs must be set to DHCP not static.

No your workgroup is irrelevant to discovery - the workgroup is just a NetBIOS name service thing. Discovery is performed at a much lower level during the broadcasting and receiving of DHCP leases which NetBIOS has nothing to do with. Potentially, once discovered and in certain Windows OS's, the workgroup issue may effect whether LMCE can authenticate into your PC for access to data on the shares, but I just put the username and password directly into the share configuration in the LMCE web admin to avoid any of that..

[sincityharley]

I already know this is going to sounds like a stupid question but.......how do I change my other two computers to draw a dhcp address from the internal address? They are both set to dhcp and they pull a 192.168.1.* Now the LMCE box is also plugged into the same router so how do I just figured that they would all pull the IP scheme. Changing them to the internal network, is that a router setting? Just to clarify all computers plugged into the same router and all computers are pulling dhcp addresses.

[colinjones]

The DHCP "client" by definition will get whatever IP address/subnet that is served to it by the DHCP server for that subnet. So just patching them into your internal subnet will mean they are served by LMCE's DHCP server and so get the right IP addresses - no configuration changes required.

The key is to remember that 1) you can only have 1 DHCP server for each subnet (one for the external, on for the internal), and 2) DHCP requests are isolated within their own subnet. This means your broadband router can provide DHCP to your external subnet (probably just assigning the Core's external IP address once you move all your equipment to the internal network), and your LMCE Core will provide DHCP to your internal network.