How can i make windows machine to access LVM data
 

Hi,
Please help me!. Well i'm in a tough situation. I'm using RHEL ES 4 with update 2.
I've created 3 logical volumes in the File server machine & mounted them permanently in the fstab.
1. /dev/Algovol/logAlgovol /Algo ext3 defaults 1 2
2. /dev/Swvol/logSwvol /Sw ext3 defaults 1 2
3. /dev/icvol/logicvol /ic ext3 defaults 1 2

There are few members in the company having windows machines..rest are having linux machines. Now everyone wants to access the shared data which resides in the /Algo, /Sw & /ic folder.Linux uers are able to access through NFS..But when i share the contents through Samba none can access the data..no windows users or linux users.
I somehow wants the windows users to access this shared data using samba.
I heard its dangerous to share to share the contents which resides in the logical volumes.Is it true? Please help me in this.


A crashed Linux user....

Visit; http://www.labf.com/nfsaxe/index.html the nfsAxe package is fairly cheap and will allow the Windows based systems (using the NFS client) to access the NFS shares.

Hi Lenard,
Thanks for the reply.But i need your help once more.Right now the samba option is working only for the parent directory not for the subdirectories.I'll explain in detail.

The logical volume /dev/icvol/logicvol is mounted to /ic.
Inside the /ic there are 3 subdirectories lets say a, b & c.
c - is a cvsrepository
a - we want everyone to check out the cvs contents to this folder
b - where everyone keeps their simulation files & other things.

for a & b => owner = root & group =root
c => owner = cvsuser group =cvsuser

if i share only /ic using samba, then from windows client side they can map to it( but they will be seeing the cvs repository data also..which we don't want)
if i share /ic/a & /ic/b separately using samba then i'm not able to map to that particular share.
Also please say whether the sharing which i've done(sharing a logical volume) is good or not for the data inside it.As i said earlier i'm confused after the reading the article that"sharing the logical volume is dangerous"..

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/sharinglvm1.html

Please give me a reply..

One cannot share sub-directories of a shared directory, it does not work. Share each sub directory and not the parent directory.

share1 == /ic/a
share2 == /ic/b
share3 == /ic/c

This http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/sharinglvm1.html section does not apply. Take note of the sentence, "If you have a fibre-channel or shared-SCSI environment where more than one machine has physical access"

Do you have two or more systems attached physically to the hard drive where the logical volumes are??
Shares are not physical access only logical access.

Hi Lenard,
Thanks again...We have got 2 servers..1 dhcp & the 2nd one file server which contains this logical volumes..No system is attached physically to the file servers hard disk..
I checked the share just like you said.At first i checked by sharing /ic/a & /ic/b only..But when i tried to map it failed..
Then i checked by sharing the entire parent directory(ONLY /ic)..then it worked..

i'll give the /etc/samba/smb.conf file entry here

for /ic/a sharing i entered

path = /ic/a
valid users = cvsic
guest ok = yes
writeable = yes
browseable = yes
hosts allow = 192.168.1. 127.

But when i try to map i get "network unreachable message" or no shared folder found message.