x9abm

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I think the answer is simple - just don't know what it is!

I have two netwrorked machines running SuSE 8.2, they both dual boot W98 and SuSE and have Reiser and vfat partitions.

When both machines run SuSE I can see and read/write all the Reiser partitions from each machine, but I can only see the vfat partitions, no files/directories are readable within the vfats.

Read/write of the local vfats is fine, only the remotes are a problem.

Server Exports file:
/ jim(rw,no_root_squash,sync)

Client fstab:
192.168.0.2:/ /jane nfs auto,users,rw 0 0

Help gratefully received!

acid_kewpie

afaik you can't. without sounding patronising... do things properly. nfs is an advanced protocol for sharing unix file system. vfat on the other hand is a toy. sharing this on a network is a big security risk as it's just too basic for a network to function well. While in theory there's no reason it couldn't do this i believe this is a very intentional move on the part of the developers, and not just a configuation issue.

x9abm

Thanks for info - Doesn't look as if I can do it with nfs.

How then can I share a vfat partition over a Linux network? I need dual boot machines (so must have vfat partitions for W98). The vfat partitions hold the files that need to be accessed under W98 and Linux.


Any advice welcomed.

Andrew

Thymox

SAMBA is your answer.

x9abm

SAMBA sounds like a good idea but I am reaching my level of ignorance.....

Looking at the docs SAMBA works only with a client machine running Wxx not with a Linux client - ??

Also SAMBA on any machine seems to run as either client or server, not both, so I would not be able to share files in both directions - ??

lahyene

samba can be use from Linux distro
with smbmount
who is I recently read deprecated

Thymox

Welcome to LQ.

SAMBA can be used in to ways. It can be used to serve SMB shares (Windows shares) over a network for Windows clients. It can also be used as a client for SMB shares. If you need to share stuff between two dualboot boxes, but you need it to be accessible regardless of which OS the boxes are boot to, then you need SAMBA. Using SAMBA as a client, it doesn't care what OS is being used to create the share, just that the share exists. You can quite easily use one Linux box to share stuff using SMB to another Linux box.

Personally I would prefer to use NFS to share stuff between two Linux boxes, but you'd then need to get extra Windows stuff to read NFS shares, and it'll be even harder (I guess) to create NFS shares from within Windows.... and you want as little extra software running on Windows, it is unstable enough as it is

Good luck.

tg5027

Try LinNeighborhood. It will mount a windoze network share to a linux directory just like nfs does. It can be scripted to do it also.

If you want to access linux files with windoze, try running cygwin under windoze. The access to linux data will have to be "two step" since windoze doesn't understand linux file systems. But you can copy from a remote or local linux file system into your local windoze file system and back again.

The best solution is to give up dual booting and run Win4Lin under linux and just give up the windoze partitions totally!

x9abm

Many thanks for your contributions - I'll do some more work on Samba and LinNeighbourhood and see how I get on.

Last time I looked at Win4Lin it seemed ok for Office but not much support for games and sound etc.

Can't get away from dual booting until I can run the digicam, kids games, DVB-T, Wavefinder, Psion PDA, Clie PDA and change the mind set of a few people! but I'm working on it....

Andrew

tg5027

I use Win4Lin for software development - not into much multimedia, games, etc - but from the email list they have made a major step forward in V5.

Assuming you're not real concerned about security, you can use this entry in /etc/fstab to mount a windoze partition as read-write:

/dev/hdx /Win98 vfat rw,auto,user,exec,dev,suid,uid=username,gid=users 00

All one line. Where username is yours. You can use noauto if you don't always wanted it mounted (like if it the c drive). I have some vfat partitions that I mount auto, but I don't use auto for the system partitions.

Then change the ownership and privileges as something like:

chown username:users /Win98
chmod 777 /Win98

Good luck with changing mindsets! I'm still trying to convert my wife away from windoze (3+ years) - even with Win4Lin.

buttersoft

What about Fastlnyx V3.3 via parallel or serial cables, this supports transfer between Linux and Windows.