[CentOS] Connecting to a Novell Server

Sun Jan 21 03:18:31 UTC 2007
Paul <subsolar at subsolar.com>

On Fri, 2007-01-19 at 08:45 -0500, Rob Lines wrote:
> 
> 
> On 1/18/07, Paul <subsolar at subsolar.com> wrote:
>         On Thu, 2007-01-18 at 11:50 -0500, Jay Lee wrote:
>         > Mike Fedyk wrote:
>         > > Rob Lines wrote:
>         > >> I am trying to connect our centos 4.4 machines to our
>         Novell Netware
>         > >> 5 servers.
>         > >>
>         > >> The goal is to allow the centos 4.4 clients to connect to
>         the server
>         > >> and access shared folders.  We are not looking for a
>         single sign-on
>         > >> style solution just the ability to connect. 
>         > >
>         > > Check into using ncpfs with centos.  If not, then see if
>         netware can
>         > > serve to nfs or smb/cifs clients.
>         > ncpfs is only in the centosplus kernel I believe.  I also
>         found it buggy 
>         > and horribly slow.
>         
>         Yes, you need to be using the CentOS Plus kernel and build the
>         NCPFS
>         rpms from fedora so you can mount the volumes.
>         
>         It also does not hurt to have IPX enabled on Netware &
>         Linux ... we have 
>         IPX enabled yet because we still use DOS and the old moldy 2.x
>         client
>         still seems to work best for our use.
>         
>         I can see if dig out the information on what I did for the one
>         C4
>         station I setup
> 
> I definatly would like to see that info if you can find it.

The thing that took the more work to figure out was setting up the
repository setting so that the only thing I would get from the centos
plus repository was the kernel.   I'll have to grab the config once I
get into work.  

After setting up the repo and installing the centos plus kernel the next
thing was go get a copy of the ncpfs source rpm from the fedora
repository and rebuild it on centos.  One change I did have to make to
the spec file was setting the permissions for ncpmount and ncpumount to
suid root.

After installing the ncpfs rpm I needed to enable IPX for networking by
modifying the /etc/sysconfig/network file to add lines like the
following:
IPX=yes
IPXAUTOFRAME=on
IPXAUTOPRIMAY=on
IPXINTERNALNETNUM=

I rebooted the system and did a slist to to see if it could find any
servers.  That went OK so the final step was to install a GUI for the
end user to log into the server and mount the volumes.  For that I
compiled gtknw2 from source (http://gtknw2.sourceforge.net) and tested
that out.

I'll have to flesh this out more monday when I can get a look at the
system.  One thing that probably should be done different is to put the
IPX settings in the /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth0 file
instead.  I did have a doc on doing all this on RHL 7.3 ... that might
be a good starting point for the interface configuration.

I need to document this properly anyways, I'll have something better,
but this might get you started.

> The one question that I do have is what effect the move to the CentOS
> Plus kernel would have other than allowing us access to the ncpfs?
> The users are power users that mostly maintain their own machines and
> handle their own updates.  What issues could come up by using the new
> kernel rather than the base one? 

It would add some legacy drivers and a few additional network protocols
like IPX, Appletalk, Decnet etc.   I don't foresee any real issue
especially if they don't have root permissions on the workstations.

I would definitely be careful how you mount the file systems.  Also,
there is theoretically the possibility of security issues with the
ncpmount & ncpumount commands being SUID root, but I'm not aware of any
outstanding security bugs currently.

Regards,
Paul