- Kernel NCPFS support— The Linux kernel includes support for the NCP filesystem in the Network File Systems submenu of the File Systems menu. This support allows a Linux computer to mount NetWare file shares. You need the ncpmount program, which usually ships in a package called ncpfs, to accomplish this task.
- LinWare— This package provides limited NCP server support. At the time of this writing, however, the current version is 0.95 beta, which was designed for the 1.3.x kernels—in other words, the software hasn't been updated since 1996. This might change in the future, though. The package is housed under the name lwared at ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/network/daemons/.
- Mars_nwe— This is another NetWare server package for Linux. This package is hosted at http://www.compu-art.de/mars_nwe/, which is largely in German. English documentation is in the Mars_nwe HOWTO document, http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/tips/Netware/netware.html. Mars_nwe supports both file and print services. Its primary configuration file is /etc/nwserv.conf or /etc/nwserv/nwserv.conf, and it can be started by typing nwserv, if it's not started automatically by a startup script.
All of these IPX/SPX packages require you to have IPX support compiled into your kernel, as described in Chapter 1. Some distributions also require a separate package, usually called ipxutils, which contains utilities for activating and controlling the IPX/SPX network stack. (Alternatively, some distributions include these tools in the ncpfs package.)
If you intend to run a server for NetWare clients, Mars_nwe configuration is usually not too difficult, because the default configuration works fairly well. The configuration file is also usually very well commented, so you can learn how to configure it by reading its comments. You should pay particular attention to a few details:
- Section 1 of the file defines the volumes that are to be shared. In Linux terms, these are directories. The configuration file that ships with your copy of the server may or may not define volumes that you'd want to share.
- Section 7 controls password encryption options. You may need to enable nonencrypted passwords if your network doesn't have a regular NetWare bindery server—a computer that handles authentication.
- Section 13 defines users who are to be allowed access to the server. You may need to add usernames and passwords to this section, duplicating the regular Linux username and password configuration. Passwords are stored in an unencrypted form, which is a potential security flaw. If the network has a bindery, though, you can remove these entries after starting Mars_nwe for the first time, so the security risk may not be as bad as it first appears. Instead of dealing with individual accounts, you can set up Section 15 to do this automatically, but the drawback is that all the accounts will have the same password.
The Mars_nwe package includes the means to automatically enable IPX support on your network interface. This convenience doesn't exist in the case of Linux's NetWare client support as implemented in ncpmount, however. Before you can use this command, you should enable auto-configuration with the ipx_configure command. You can then mount a NetWare volume with ncpmount. The entire procedure might resemble the following:
# ipx_configure —auto_interface=on —auto_primary=on
# ncpmount -S NW_SERV -U anne -P p4rtu3a /mnt/nwmount
This sequence enables auto-detection of the local network number and mounts volumes stored on NW_SERV associated with the user anne at /mnt/nwmount, using the password p4rtu3a
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