Accessing a Novell NetWare Network

[MG-Cloud]

Hi,

I'm going to be setting up a Linux web server (most likely Gentoo) at my school shortly, to upgrade our old one (an old 233mhz with no hard disk space left).

I'm fairly sure I'll have no problems installing apache, php, and mysql - I've done it before (with the aid of webmin, but I think it should be okay to do manually as well, especially since i'll have physical access to the box). However, the way our school's website is set up is weird. The school district does not allow any outside internet access from the school (anything outgoing is through proxies which are http only, and no listening ports are allowed). Also, we can't get any outside hosting (unless we want to forgo the official school district url). There is a place on the network set up for us to upload our website to.

The current setup is a PHP website, with a custom-coded CMS by a student a few years ago. The server has a cron job set to mirror the site's html files using httrack 2x daily and upload it into the designated folder in the network.

I just have a few questions though.

The network folder the site is uploaded to is (naturally) protected; only some network accounts can access it. How can I make a connection to the Network and mount the network drive using Linux (I have the account details and the full path on the server, the server name, etc).

Also, is the Netware server generally responsible for allocating local ips using dhcp or something similar? Or should I just pick an IP for it to take on the network?

Can I access the network without logging in first (eg. my proxy server on the local network - 10.x.x.x).

Finally, in terms of kernel compilation - I'm fairly sure i need to enable IPX support. Do i need anything else that's special? Maybe .. support for network filesystems?

Thanks!

[zivan56]

The setup for your school is pretty standard, most school's I've been to have the same thing.

The web server should not use netware, rather it will have a static IP (set it to the current one). If you want to upload to the server easily, the best thing to use is windows networking and a share on it using samba.

[MG-Cloud]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply ...

However, I don't have access to the Netware server in order to enable filesharing on it and to create a share.

[[ucw]prophet]

Assuming I understood the question correctly, you're going to need the Novel Netware Client for Linux.

http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/tools/1518.html

As far as IPX, that'll need to be compiled into the kernel, unless your Novell servers have TCP/IP and it's turned on (Novell 5 and later). Assuming that you have all of the Novell login info, you'll be able to map directories and everything. It works quite well. The way to authenticate is simple ... log into the Linux server, open the Novel Client and login to the Novell server.

As far as IP addresses, I'd suggest a static address for any server. Don't use DHCP.

[MG-Cloud]

Great, thanks for the help !!! :)

While I can't use a GUI client, because there will be no GUI on the box that I am setting up (it's server only - while I would like to play around with the Linux GUI at school, I don't think my teacher would be too happy with me, especially if it was on a webserver :p, and I run Linux at home anyway :D), I *did* find a link on there to ncpfs, which I am assuming should be used on the command line, and should work for my purposes :)