Novell Netware and SAMBA Access

Question

We are working on migrating from a Novell Netware 6.5 (not OES) platform over to MS Active Directory. While performing testing, etc. we have found the need to have access to shares on the Novell Netware 6.5 server from a variety of our clients including Windows XP, Windows 7, Macintosh OS X, and various Linux distributions. We do not have SAMBA share access available on the Netware server right now and I was curious if there was a way to enable it? We are trying to use some methods with FTPS but it is not working out very well. Please note that we are not using the OES version of Novell.

Thanks in advance for your help with this.

Answer 1

What you're looking for is CIFS access on the NetWare server. Getting it up is actually pretty well documented. If you're using iManager, it should be under the Native File Access tabs. You may need to run 'cifsstrt' on the console before those changes take, but it's all there.

Also, be sure 'cifsstrt' is in the autoexec.ncf file so it'll survive reboots. It's there by default, so someone would have to have removed it for it to NOT be there.

The thing to remember about NetWare CIFS is that it only speaks LanManager, not NTLM. Your Win Vista and Win7 machines will have to have their default Lan Man Authentication Level turned down to allow it.

Answer 2

As it is already said, CIFS in NetWare 6.5 is enabled by default, for all volumes on the server. You'll need to create the so-called simple passwords for users to let them access the NetWare server this way though. You can do this with ConsoleOne, but only from a workstation connected to the server, not from ConsoleOne running on the server itself.

After you create a simple password, verify that it works with something like this from a workstation:

net use p: \\netware65\SYS

You will be prompted for a user name and a password. Use the corresponding simple password for the user name supplied