[plug] FTP setup and transfer

[Alex Nordstrom]

On Thursday, 30 Sep 2004 08:07, Joong Cho wrote:
> I am new to Debian Linux. Just installed it at the PLUG night.

Congratulations.

Before we start off, please tell your e-mail program not to send HTML 
e-mail to this list, as many of the people who might answer your 
questions better than I might ignore or filter out e-mail with HTML in 
them, based on the position that it is a common property of unsolicited 
bulk e-mail, and that it adds no meaning (but considerable size) to the 
message.

> Just got several questions for you guys. How do you transfer files
> between Windows and Linux, as I put sharing on several Windows
> folders networked?

There are, of course, many ways to transfer files between computers, but 
assuming you do want to use the standard file sharing functions in 
Windows, the Samba package on Linux is your friend. To install it, 
become root (using the "su" command or "sudo" if you have it set up and 
prefer that), and say:

apt-get install samba

For graphical frontends, you might want to look at packages like 
kdenetwork-filesharing, lisa, and komba2, all assuming you use KDE. To 
show information about them, say "apt-cache show packagename", or just 
use Google.

> I also need to know how to set up an FTP site. Anyone know how to do
> that?

The virtual package ftp-server is provided by several different 
(mutually exclusive) alternatives in Debian, so that becomes a likely 
candidate term for searching:

apt-cache search ftp-server

Use Google or "apt-cache show" to find out which best suits your needs.

> Also, how do you set up a domain name in the /etc/hosts file, when it
> is set to read only mode?

Use chmod to change the permissions to include write privileges for the 
owner ("chmod u+w /etc/hosts"). Most likely though, you just need to 
become root before editing it, since it's probably owned by root with 
no write privileges for anyone else (and rightly so).

In general, "man apt-cache", "man apt-get", "man chmod", and just about 
any command or name of an important file preceded by "man" (for manual) 
should provide useful reading, as should whatever Google turns up. 
Don't miss the references to related information at the bottom of many 
man pages under the "see also" heading.

Good luck!

-- 
Alex Nordstrom
http://lx.n3.net/
Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to plug.