Hi,

I have a CentOS 4.5 installed in a VMWare Workstation. I downloaded the Novel Client for Linux, and installed it along with the ncpfs package.

I am able to log in to a Novell server at work when I submit the following command:

"ncpmount -S myserver.com -A myserver.com -U myuser -P mypassword -u myuid -g mygid -m /home/myprofile/mytargetfolder"

Once I have logged in, I encounter three problems:

1) I cannot see all the servers available for connection in the tree when I submit an slist command (I can only view the servers available in my subnet). I am trying to connect also to other servers. I receive the following error:
"ncpmount: All referrals failed (-626) in nds login"
I have seen documentation for this in the follwing Novell site: http://www.novell.com/documentation/...s/fffffd8e.htm

This refers to an error while walking the NDS tree. What can I do?

2) The connection is good for about 1 minute, after that I cannot see the objects in my Novell share.
How can I make this connection more stable?

3) I do not have all my rights in the Novell share, because I cannot copy new files into this share.
How can I get all my correct rights in this folder?


Help is greatly appreciated.

After many days of research and networking, i finally got everything solved:

1) a) To fix the 'slist' problem:

Some old versions had problems if you started with replica-less server. If 'slist' does not report all servers, then most probably you have replica-less servers. Upgrade to latest ncpfs available. It should fix problem unless your tree is in inconsistent state.

b) To fix the "ncpmount: All referrals failed (-626) in nds login. Login denied." problem:

One thing you can try is that there is (undocumented option) -a <directory> to reuse your authentication information for another server. So you can just login into first server using:

ncpmount -S servera -A servera.dns.com -U userid -P password -V sys /tmp/servera

and then you can reuse this connection for other servers in same tree:

ncpmount -S serverb -A serverb.dns.com -a /tmp/servera -V sys /tmp/serverb
ncpmount -S serverc -A serverc.dns.com -a /tmp/servera -V sys /tmp/serverc

It might allow ncpfs to resolve your user name using servera's NDS database, avoiding -626 error. You should not log out from servera until you establish all your connections - when you log out yourself from servera, and then you'll try to use /tmp/serverb, it may tell you that you are not logged in - NDS has concept of 'monitored connection', which is one used for your initial authentication (usually one established with server which holds master or read-write replica of your account), and if that connection goes down, you are still logged to individual servers, but you are not known to NDS anymore, so you cannot authenticate yourself to additional servers.

To use '-a' option your kernel needs to be configured with option to save and restore NDS private data - 2.6.x kernels do not allow you to disable this option anymore, but 2.4.x kernels do - and if you disable it, -a will not work...

2) To fix the stable connection problem:

The tree is apparently in inconsistent state... You can try adding '-o tcp' option to ncpmount, it will then use TCP instead of UDP. In either case you should see warnings in `dmesg` that server aborted your connection.

3) To fix the Read/Write rights problem:

ncpmount has two switches for this. -f (file mode)and -d (dir mode). These options are used to determine what permissions should be assigned files and directories of the mounted volumes. You should probably use only 777 for -f & -d.