Hi all,
today I’ve decided to install the Haiku networking kit on my machine and documented this short how-to. May be it could be useful for other BeOS rookies:
*** Note: Please be careful when using this how-to. Until now, I didn’t find out how to install the networking-kit in a proper way. My how-to worked sometimes on my machine with Athlon XP and SIS-NIC-Chipset, but mostly it crashes at the “ifconfig”. I’ve installed it on my other machine with Athlon-900 and 3Com-NIC, but there I was unable to get a network connection. May be someone other could explain how to install the kit in a proper way, the installation instructions in the package seems not to do it. ***
1. Get the latest binaries
You can download them from http://www.haiku-os.org/factory/packages/haiku-networkingkit-cvs.zip. Unzip the file to your desktop (/boot/home/Desktop).
2. Installation
First, you should save some files which will be overwritten. If something goes wrong, you can restore your “original” networking kit.
Open the “Terminal”-application (you can find it at Applications/Accessories) und type this:
cd /boot/beos/etc
mkdir sav
cp services sav
cd /boot/beos/bin
mkdir sav
cp ping sav
cd /boot/beos/system/lib
mkdir sav
cp libnet.so sav
cp libnetapi.so sav
Please do the backup only at the first installation!
Now copy the new files to the correct destinations:
cd /boot/home/Desktop/haiku-networkingkit/etc
mv * /boot/beos/etc
cd …/lib
mv * /boot/beos/system/lib
cd …
mv arp ifconfig ping pppconfig route traceroute /boot/beos/bin
3. Configuration
There is a GUI configuration tool “Network”, but it seems not to work (at least not for me), so we do the configuration manually.
This is my network configuration which I use for my example. If your data varies, replace my example data by your corresponding values:
IP-Address of my BeOS machine: 192.168.2.102
Subnet mask of my BeOS machine: 255.255.255.0
IP-Address of my router: 192.168.2.1
Address of my DNS-server: 192.168.2.1
My ethernet device is called “sis9000”. If you’re unsure, type “ifconfig -a” in the terminal. The charcters before the first colon are your device.
For my example, type this to configure the ethernet device:
ifconfig sis9000 192.168.2.102 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
route add default 192.168.2.1
Note: BeOS “forgets” this settings after the next boot, so we should pack it into a shell script file:
Type into the terminal: vi /boot/home/netconf.sh
Type Esc, then “i”.
Type “#!/bin/sh” and Return, the type the text of above
After that, type Esc, then ":wq!"
Type “chmod +x /boot/home/netconf.sh”
The last step is to make an entry for your DNS server:
Type into the terminal: vi /boot/beos/etc/resolv.conf
Go with the curor keys to the last line after the word "nameserver"
Type Esc, then “i”. Type the address of the DNS server (e. g. 192.168.2.1)
Type Esc, then “:wq!”
Reboot your machine.
After the reboot, open a terminal and type “netconf.sh”. You must do this after every reboot to get a network connection!
Your interface is now ready for use. You can test it, for example, with a “ping www.yahoo.com” on the terminal. If you got a reply, everything is fine 
. If not, check properly the steps above.
Hint: like in other operating systems, you can use a “hosts”-file. You can edit it with vi. The file must be located at /boot/beos/etc.
Starting the mail daemon
You must start the mail daemon manually after each boot, because there are no valid network setting after booting your machine (see above). You can start the mail daemon via the “Terminal”-application with this command:
/boot/beos/system/servers/mail_daemon &
Optional: fallback
If you can’t get running the Haiku networking kit, you can restore your system with this commands at the terminal:
cd /boot/beos/etc
cp ./sav/services .
cd /boot/beos/bin
cp ./sav/ping .
cd /boot/beos/system/lib
cp ./sav/lib* .
Reboot your machine
Warning
Do not put the “ifconfig”- or “route”-command in the system startup script “/boot/home/config/boot/UserBootscript”! At least on my machine, the network kit is crashing the machine!
