This is ncpfs, a free NetWare client filesystem for Linux. Besides some little utilities it also contains nprint, which enables you to print on NetWare print queues. The opposite side, pserver, is also provided. ncpfs works with NetWare versions 3.x and following. It does NOT work with NetWare version 2.x. Some of the NetWare look-alikes, such as CD-ROM servers WinNT 3.51 Server are also NOT supported. This restriction comes from the fact that ncpfs relies heavily on the name space facilities NetWare supports since version 3. When you want to mount volumes that have been exported by mars_nwe, you have to activate the name space calls in mars_nwe's config.h file, although probably it's more clever to use nfs between two Linux machines. The user-space utilities such as nprint and the bindery utils should work with all versions of NetWare. INSTALLATION Before you start the installation, make sure that your kernel has IPX support compiled in. When 'make config' asks you for The IPX protocol (CONFIG_IPX) [N/y/m/?] simply answer 'y' or 'm'. Probably you do not need the full internal net that you are asked for next. Run 'configure', 'make' and, as root, 'make install'. That's all. Before installing new version of ncpfs, you should stop all users of old version, to release libncp.so from memory. Run as root: umount -v -a -tncpfs Command above unmounts all your ncpfs mounted volumes. Of course, it is not necessary if you agree that disk space occupied by old libncp.so will be released after reboot and that currently mounted shares will continue using old libncp.so until unmount. See shell script file "contrib/scripts/rc.ipxnet" for other details. HELP In the meantime my mail volume has grown considerably, so the response time might be better at the LinWare mailing list than at my personal email address. You can mail to and/or subscribe to the LinWare mailing list: Topics for the list: - discussing LinWare server, its features, installation problems and bugs - using IPX protocol under Linux - IPX routing and router daemons under Linux - mars_nwe - ncpfs You can subscribe to the list by sending the command "add linware" in the mail message body to address: "listserv@sh.cvut.cz". Your postings should be sent to: "linware@sh.cvut.cz". USING NCPFS Please note that your IPX system has to be configured correctly. If you want to take the 'Plug-and-Play' route, you can simply say 'ipx_configure --auto_interface=on --auto_primary=on'. If ncpmount does not work immediately, you should wait for about 1 minute and try again. In that period, an IPX packet should have passed by and your network interface should have configured itself automatically. If all that does not work and you want to do the configuration by hand, note that there has to be a route to the internal network of your server. Please see the file util/start_ipx for an example. I use tools written by Greg Page, Caldera. I hope I did not do too much harm to their business. For your convenience I included the contents of the file ipx.tar made available by Caldera. My main source of information is a book written in german by Manfred Hill and Ralf Zessin, "Netzwerkprogrammierung in C", IWT Verlag GmbH, 1995, ISBN 3-88322-491-X. It contains quite a lot of typographical and other errors, but I find it very valuable as an introduction to NCP programming. If you know about the concepts and possibilities of NCP, Ralph Brown's interrupt list becomes much more readable. It's much easier to find undocumented information if you know what to look for! For the curious: the files ncplib.[ch] are a library that makes it possible to send NCP requests to the server over a mounted directory. I use it to keep the encryption stuff out of the kernel by logging in from user space. Look at the file ncptest.c for other possible uses. I use ncptest to check my assumptions about the widely undocumented NetWare Core Protocol. Maybe this is the beginning of a free NetWare API for Linux! I would be happy to receive your comments on this. THANKS I do not want to leave those unmentioned, who have helped me with ncpfs. The most enthusiastic user and tester is certainly Uwe Bonnes <bon@elektron.ikp.physik.th-darmstadt.de>. So far he's the only one who has contributed something, namely manpages and corrections to existing manpages. Ales Dyrak has written lwared, which was the initial start for ncpfs. Alan Cox has found some bugs I would probably never have found. Look at the file Changes for others. LIMITATIONS (compare these with smbfs :-) The limitations ncpfs has are the natural limitations of the NCP protocol, which was designed with MS-DOS based PCs in mind. The first limitation is the lack of uid, gid and permission information per file. You have to assign those values once for a complete mounted directory. Have fun with ncpfs! Volker, lendecke@namu01.gwdg.de (original author) Petr Vandrovec, vandrove@vc.cvut.cz (current maintainer)