NCPMOUNT(8)
NAME
ncpmount - mount all volumes of a specified Novell file-
server.
SYNOPSIS
ncpmount [ -h ] [ -S server ] [ -U user name ] [ -P pass-
word | -n ] [ -C ] [ -c client name ] [ -u uid ] [ -g gid
] [ -f file mode ] [ -d dir mode ] [ -V volume ] [ -t
time_out ] [ -r retry_count ] [ -v ] mount-point
DESCRIPTION
This program is used to mount all volumes of the specified
NetWare Fileserver under the specified mount point.
ncpfs is a linux filesystem which understands the NCP pro-
tocol. This is the protocol Novell NetWare clients use to
talk to NetWare servers. ncpfs was inspired by lwared, a
free NetWare emulator for Linux written by Ales Dryak. See
ftp://klokan.sh.cvut.cz/pub/linux for this very interest-
ing program.
ncpmount when invoked with all appropriate arguments
attaches, logs in and mounts all of the volumes associated
with the specified fileserver that are readable by the
user id under the specified mount point. ncpmount when
invoked without any arguments specifying the fileserver,
user id and password checks the file $HOME/.nwclient to
find a file server, a user name and possibly a password to
use for the specified mount point. See nwclient(5) for
more information. Please note that the access permissions
of .nwclient MUST be 600, for security reasons.
OPTIONS
mount-point
mount-point is the directory you want to mount the
filesystem over. Its function is the the same as for a
normal mount command.
If the real uid of the caller is not root, ncpmount
checks whether the user is allowed to mount a filesys-
tem on the mount-point. So it should be safe to make
ncpmount setuid root. The filesystem stores the uid of
the user who called ncpmount. So ncpumount can check
whether the caller is allowed to unmount the filesys-
tem.
-S server
server is the name of the server you want to use.
-h
-h is used to print out a short help text.
-C
By default passwords are converted to uppercase before
they are sent to the server because most servers
require this. This option disables this feature ensur-
ing that passwords are sent without any case conver-
sion.
-n
-n must be specified for logins that do not have a
password configured.
-P password
specifies the password to use for the Netware user id.
If neither -n nor the -P arguments are specified ncp-
mount will prompt for a password. This makes it diffi-
cult to use in scripts such as /etc/rc. If you want to
have ncpmount work automatically from a script you must
include the appropriate option and be very careful to
ensure that appopriate file permissions are set for the
script that includes your password to ensure that oth-
ers can not read it.
-U user name
Specifies the Netware user id to use when logging in to
the fileserver. If this option is not specified then
ncpmount will attempt to login to the fileserver using
the Linux login id of the user invoking ncpmount.
-u uid, -g gid
ncpmount does not yet implement a scheme for mapping
NetWare users/groups to Linux users/groups. Linux
requires that each file has an owner and group id.
With -u and -g you can tell ncpmount which id's it
should assign to the files in the mounted directory.
The defaults for these values are the current uid and
gid.
-c user name
-c names the user who is the owner of the connection,
where owner does not refer to file ownership (that
"owner" is set by the -u argument), but the owner of
the mount, ie: who is allowed to call ncpumount on this
mount. The default owner of the connection and the
mount is the user who called ncpmount. This option
allows you to specify that some other user should be
set as the owner.
In this this way it is possible to mount a public read-
only directory, but to allow the lp daemon to print on
NetWare queues. This is possible because only users who
have write permissions on a directory may issue ncp
requests over a connection. The exception to this rule
is the 'mount owner', who is also granted 'request per-
mission'.
-f file mode, -d dir mode
Like -u and -g, these options are used to determine
what permissions should be assigned files and directo-
ries of the mounted volumes. The values must be speci-
fied as octal numbers. The default values are taken
from the current umask, where the file mode is the cur-
rent umask, and the dir mode adds execute permissions
where the file mode gives read permissions.
Note that these permissions can differ from the rights
the server gives to us. If you do not have write per-
missions on the server, you can very well choose a file
mode that tells that you have. This certainly cannot
override the restrictions imposed by the server.
-V volume
There are 2 general ways you can mount a NetWare
server's disk space: Either you can mount all volumes
under one directory, or you can mount only a single
volume.
When you choose to mount the complete disk space at
once, you have the advantage that only one Linux mount
point and only one NetWare connection is used for all
the volumes of this server. Both of these are limited
resources. (Although raising the number of Linux mount
points is significantly cheaper than raising the number
of available NetWare connections ;-))
When you specify to mount a single volume by using the
option -V volume, you have the big advantage that nfsd
is able to re-export this mounted directory. You must
invoke nfsd and mountd with the option --re-export to
make nfsd re-export ncpfs mounted directories. This
uses one Linux mount point and one NetWare connection
per mounted volume. Maybe sometime in the future I will
make it possible to mount all volumes on different
mount points, using only one connection.
-t time_out
With -t you can adjust the time ncpfs waits for the
server to answer a request it sent. Use the option to
raise the timeout value when your ncpfs connections
seem to be unstable although your servers are well up.
This can happen when you have very busy servers, or
servers that are very far away.
time_out is specified in 1/100s, the current default
value is 60.
-r retry_count
As -t, -r can be used to tune the ncpfs connection to
the server. With retry_count you can specify how many
times ncpfs will attempt to send a packet to the server
before it decides the connection is dead. The current
default value is 5.
Currently ncpfs is not too clever when trying to find
out that connections are dead. If anybody knows how to
do that correctly, as it is done by commercial worksta-
tions, please tell me.
-v
Print ncpfs version number
NOTES
You must configure the IPX subsystem before ncpmount will
work. It is especially important that there is a route to
the internal network of your server.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
USER / LOGNAME
The variables USER or LOGNAME may contain the username
of the person using the client. USER is tried first.
If it's empty, LOGNAME is tried.
DIAGNOSTICS
Most diagnostics issued by ncpfs are logged by syslogd.
Normally nothing is printed, only error situations are
logged there.
SEE ALSO
syslogd(8) ncpumount(8) nfsd(8) mountd(8)
CREDITS
ncpfs would not have been possible without lwared, written
by Ales Dryak A.Dryak@sh.cvut.cz.
The encryption code was taken from Dr. Dobbs's Journal
11/93. There Pawel Szczerbina described it in an article
on NCP.
The ncpfs code was initially hacked from smbfs by Volker
Lendecke lendecke@math.uni-goettingen.de. smbfs was put
together by Paal-Kr. Engstad pke@engstad.ingok.hitos.no
and later polished by Volker.