Ben Hood wrote, WRT Linux SMB servers sharing CD-ROM drives to Windows
clients:
> From what I've seen of the SMB Howto, it only says it only works for
> W95/98 and NT, and W3.11 with win32s drivers and DLLs.
Samba (the GPLed SMB client and server for various Unices including Linux)
sets your Linux box up as an SMB server (optionally, it can become Browse
Master or Domain Controller) sharing printers and drives, just as Windows
will. It's very flexible indeed, but due to some bugs in MS's clients
(typical, isn't it? They have a controlling hand on the spec but they still
manage to check up on its filesystems) you need to be aware of some caveats.
The supplied docs are more than detailed enough though.
WfW 3.11 has the Windows Networking client built in, as do Win9x and NT.
However, the WfW3.11 client won't send username and password information
correctly so you either need a default username (I have root on my closed
system) or a protocol without such facilities (COREPLUS should do the
trick). However, it is possible to share to a vanilla WfW3.11 box. MS also
have a DOS client around somewhere.
> ] I'm not 100% sure what Ben means by "local CD ROM" though.
> So applications see it as normal CD-ROM. This probably isn't all that
> important...
Weeeellllll... When you map the share to a drive letter (e.g. NET MAP (or
is it CONNECT?) \\HOLLY\CDROM\ X: to map your CD to drive X:) DOS and apps
will see the drive as 'redirected' - that is, the network redirector catches
requests to the drive and pipes them over the network to the server. CD-ROM
drivers (the MSCDEX or equivalent portion) are the same - the *CDEX
redirector catches the request and handles the ISO9660 filesystem on the CD.
Windows 3 can't usually tell if a drive is CD-ROM or networked (at least, my
old 3.1 machine couldn't). Some apps (CD-specific, e.g. a CD player or a
game) will use the MSCDEX interface for CD-ROM specific functions, which
will fail on a mapped network connection. But on the whole most things will
run regardless.
> What client software is needed? I'm pretty sure I can get the server
> stuff happening.
SMB clients are included as part of WfW 3.11 (maybe WfW 3.1 but not vanilla
3.1 or 3.11), Win9x, WinNT, Win2K and some Linux distros. They are also
available for other platforms, and MS ha{d,ve} one available for MS-DOS via
anonymous FTP.
> I was fooling with Personal Netware but it needs too many drivers...
One more than conventional NetWare on the client and two more than
conventional NetWare on the server (PNW.VLM is the client authentication and
handling driver and SERVER.EXE is, sure enough, the server).
> I think I could handle the linux/w95 stuff with software easily
> available (either on the internet or a CD), just need DOS software.
Samba is a pretty small download I believe - below 1Mb last I got it I
think. There was a reference to the DOS client URL in the docs I believe.
Regards,
Ben A L Jemmett
(http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ben.jemmett, http://www.deltasoft.com)
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