Subject: Linux-Activists - DOC Channel digest. 93-2-4-10:8
From: "Linux Activists" <[email-masked]>
To: "Linux-Activists" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 15:57:39 +0200

Topics:
	 LDP Networking Guide

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From: Olaf Kirch <[email-masked]>
Subject: LDP Networking Guide
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 11:54:16 +0200

Well, folks,

>From the reactions to my proposal to take anything relating
to networking out of the System Administrator's Guide, I
gather that most everyone approves of it. Unfortunately, I
wasn't able to reach Lars for comments, but I think we can
sort out at a later time what he thinks should go into both
manuals.

Be it then. Since I started the whole thing and nobody seems
inclined to wrestle the work from my hands :-), I'll
take over coordinating this one, plus writing a couple of
chapters for it.

The outline I would propose goes along one of the following
(it's sort of a brainstorming :-):

*   Introduction. Idle chit-chat on networking in
    general. (Being worked upon)

    *   Different concepts of networking: LANs, store-and-forward
        networks (UUCP), Internetworking. A rough sketch of address
        resolution and routing in any of these.

    *   Back To Basics: The OSI reference model; layers. The way
        it's handled in the ARPAnet: IP-addresses and routing.
        Datagrams vs. streams. Ports and well-known services.
        The BSD socket library (incl. AF_UNIX sockets?).
        The way UUCP does it.

    *   The domain name system. More on name servers, resolvers,
        queries. Resource records in the DNS database.

    *   Example. I would like to construct a 'standard' situation
        throughout the manual that might serve as a reference 
        for people on a UUCP network as well as a LAN.

*   Configuration of TCP/IP networking in Linux.

    *   Hardware configuration. I don't know anything about that.

    *   Use of 'config' to initialize the IP routing table.
        (BTW, how are IP addresses mapped to Ethernet addresses?)

    *   /etc/services.

    *   Nameserver configuration files, and /etc/inet/hosts.

    *   Configuration of the resolv(3) library (/etc/inet/host.conf).

    *   Configuration of inetd.

*   Configuration of UUCP networking in Linux. (Done.)

*   Mail transport. (Being worked upon, but only smail. I don't feel
    the urge to dig into sendmail :-)

*   Netnews transport.

*   ftpd, fingerd, ...

*   RPC. portmap

*   Applications: Mail user agents, Newsreaders,...

Well, don't be frightened by the outline being so specific about
the first two parts (Introduction/Configuration). I don't intend
to write a book on networking in general; they're only the parts I already
thought of in detail. I don't think the introduction should take up more
than, say 5 pages; Configuration will certainly take up a bit more,
and so will descriptions of mail and netnews.

Let me hear your opinion

Olaf

--
Olaf Kirch      [email-masked], [email-masked]

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