General setup —> [*] Networking support Networking options (Starting a web site)
General setup —> [*] Networking support Networking options —> <*> The IPX protocol Network device support —> [*] Ethernet (10 or 100Mbit) … and appropriate Ethernet device drivers If you want Linux to support the NCP filesystem so it can mount remote NetWare volumes, you must additionally select these options: Filesystems —> [*] /proc filesystem support <*> NCP filesystem support (to mount NetWare volumes) When you’ve compiled and installed your new kernel, you’re ready to run IPX. Configuring IPX Interfaces Just as with TCP/IP, you must configure your IPX interfaces before you can use them. The IPX protocol has some unique requirements; consequently, a special set of configuration tools was developed. We will use these tools to configure our IPX interfaces and routes. Network Devices Supporting IPX The IPX protocol assumes that any collection of hosts that can transmit datagrams to each other without routing belong to the same IPX network. All hosts belonging to a single Ethernet segment would all belong to the same IPX network. Similarly (but less intuitively), both hosts supporting a PPP-based serial link must belong to the IPX network that is the serial link itself. In an Ethernet environment, there are a number of different frame types that may be used to carry IPX datagrams. The frame types represent different Ethernet protocols and describe differing ways of carrying multiple protocols on the same Ethernet network. The most common frame types you will encounter are 802.2 and ethernet_II. We’ll talk more about frame types in the next section. The Linux network devices that currently support the IPX protocol are the Ethernet and PPP drivers. The Ethernet or PPP interface must be active before it can be configured for IPX use. Typically, you configure an Ethernet device with both IP and IPX, so the device already exists, but if your network is IPX only, you need to use the ifconfig to change the Ethernet device status to the following: # ifconfig eth0 up IPX Interface Configuration Tools Greg Page developed a set of configuration tools for IPX interfaces, which is a precompiled package in modern distributions and may also be obtained in source form by anonymous FTP from http://metalab.unc.edu/ in the /pub/Linux/system/filesystems/ncpfs/ipx.tgz file. An rc script file usually runs the IPX tools at boot time. Your distribution may already do this for you if you have installed the prepackaged software. The ipx_configure Command Each IPX interface must know which IPX network it belongs to and which frame type to use for IPX. Each host supporting IPX has at least one interface that the rest of the network will use to refer to it, known as the primary interface. The Linux kernel IPX support provides a means of automatically configuring these parameters; the ipx_configure command enables or disables this automatic configuration feature.