Mounting A Netware Volume On A Linux Box (Permanent)

  • 7019638
  • 07-Sep-2007
  • 30-Aug-2017

Environment

SUSE Linux Professional 9.3 SUSE Linux 10

Situation

Permanently Mounting a NetWare Volume

Resolution


1)  Verify the installation of ncpfs:

To mount Netware servers the ncpfs package is required. Verify that this package is installed. If not, use YaST to install it. The package is available (but may not be installed) by default on all Netware distributions.

linux~# rpm -qa | grep ncpfs
ncpfs-2.6.6-7

2)  Create a mountpoint for the server:

The server must be mounted somewhere. A mountpoint (directory as placeholder) will need to be made. This document describes how to mount servers. To mount volumes you need to make a mountpoint for each volume. Mounting servers results in all volumes being available under the server mountpoint.

linux~# mkdir /mnt/myserver

3)  Create a group to assign the filerights to:

Root should not be the only one with permissions on the server. Create a local group and assign users to it. These users will get write rights to the mountpoint.

linux~# groupadd nwaccess
4)  Assign users to the defined group: 

Assign the users you want to the group you made

linux~# usermod -G nwaccess jtaylor02

5)  Create a password file:

The /etc/fstab file is a public file. NEVER place (Netware) passwords in it. Create a password file in /etc/ and flag it only read(write)able for root.

The format for the passwordfile is:

<servername>/<username>:<password>

linux~# echo myserver/myuser.location.nds:mypassword >/etc/ncp-pass
linux~# chmod 600 /etc/ncp-pass

6)  Create a mount line in /etc/fstab

Combine all above into one line in /etc/fstab to be able to quick mount netware server(s). Edit /etc/fstab with a file editor (kwrite, gedit, vi) and add a line to it with the following definitions:

<server/user> <mountpoint> ncp uid=root,gid=<group>,mode=660,owner=root,A=<server>,passwdfile=/etc/ncp-pass 0 0

For the example described above it becomes:

myserver/myuser.location.nds /mnt/myserver ncp uid=root,group=nwaccess,mode=660,owner=root,A=myserver,passwdfile=/etc/ncp-pass 0 0

Don't forget to add a last linefeed to fstab, Linux will error mounting the volume without it.

Additional Information

This article was originally published in the GWAVA knowledgebase as article ID 132.