ra@intsys.no (Robert Andersson) (04/04/91)
To my disappointment I received few replies to my query. What I got is appended below, following a copy of my original posting. I welcome more replies, surely, this must be a 'hot' topic? Regards, Robert. ---------------- From ra Thu Mar 7 21:47:36 1991 Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386,comp.dcom.lans Subject: NetBIOS client software for UNIX Keywords: NetBIOS, Lantastic, printer client, file system We have an investment already in a PC network using 10 MB/s thin Ethernet cabling and Artisoft Lantastic software. Now, we have this UNIX box sitting in a corner with users wanting to access files on the MS-DOS fileserver and print on printers on the PC net. Does a NetBIOS device driver and API sitting on top of the raw Ethernet device driver exist for any 386/486 UNIX? What about a file system type sitting on top of that again, allowing you to mount the MS-DOS filesystem under UNIX. What about printer services? From: saddison@novell.com (Skip Addison) Date: Fri, 8 Mar 91 06:58:41 PST I make no claims to being an Lantastic expert, but I doubt you can or will ever be able to do that with Lantastic. It is designed to be a low-end solution. You might consider upgrading to NetWare (3.11 or higher) which provides that capability. It will be more expensive. From: cirpka@idca.tds.philips.nl (Jan R. Cirpka) Date: Fri, 8 Mar 91 18:56:41 MET I do not know which protocol is talked by Lantastic, so I can give you only some general comments on the PC Connectivity Platform Philips Information Systems is using. > Now, we have this UNIX box sitting in a corner with users wanting to access > files on the MS-DOS fileserver and print on printers on the PC net. That is excactly the environment we are in. Using UNIX systems based on Intel 386/486 and UNIX V.3.2 and MS-DOS PCs > Does a NetBIOS device driver and API sitting on top of the raw Ethernet > device driver exist for any 386/486 UNIX? As API X/Open recently defined a mapping of NetBIOS to XTI (the X/Open Transport Interface that is very much alike TLI). We are using TLI with the XTI naming conventions and as "Transport" either OSI TRANSPORT CLass 4 with TOP/NetBIOS or TCP/IP with RFC 1001/1002 NetBIOS. > What about a file system type sitting on top of that again, allowing > you to mount the MS-DOS filesystem under UNIX. We do not offer this (only the UNIX disk as shared resource for PCs using SMB protocols). If you receive any information, please let me know. > What about printer services? Printer services on UNIX are supported via the SMB protocol. Information for using the PC printer is very muich welcomed. From: dionj@netcom.com (Dion Johnson) Date: Fri, 8 Mar 91 20:04 PST SCO has Microsoft Lan Manager available in several flavors. (Server coming soon) The LM client support is in our Open Desktop operating system. You can get more info by contacting our London (European) office, or you nearest SCO distributor, or see it at Cebit show. From: martino@logitek.co.uk (Martin O'Nions) Date: Wed, 13 Mar 91 10:09:19 GMT I don't know quite how one would integrate it with Lantastic, but there has been quite a lot of work done on NetBIOS over TCP/IP for both Unix and DOS machines. RFCs 1001 and 1002 detail the implementation of this, and are used as the foundation for commercially available LAN Manager/X (LM/X) systems. SCO, HP, AT&T and various others have either implemented LM/X (and consequently Unix NetBIOS services) or will have it shipping later this year. Full integration would mean moving to LM on your PC LAN, but you may be able to do something via this route. There's been quite a lot of LM/X orientated postings lately, and you may find it useful to watch for these (they're scattered over half a dozen groups unfortunately). If you want more info, mail me and I will put something together, or alternatively check out chapter 8 of 'Unix Networking' (Kochan and Wood/Hayden Books) which details the ESMB protocol for LM, and the two RFCs above. From: cpspm@groper.jcu.edu.au (Siva Prasaad Misra) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 19:09:33 +1000 I shall give a picture of what I had in my previous lab. I had about 30 PCs on a thick LAN and a big file server. The file server was a UNIX system(Intel 320, a multibus-1), with Intel OpenNet software. All of the PCs had same Intel PC-LINK cards, with the lower four OSI layers implemented on the card(about 256Kbytes memory and a 80186 is awailable on the card.) All the systems including the UNIX machine, understand NetBIOS calls and we had developed many applications using NetBIOS calls. Since, Ihave no idea as to what computer is your UNIX machine, and what LAN cards you have on your PCs, I may not be able to give you specific place where you can get the software. Hope this will help you in some way. For more details on INtel OpenNET software, may be you can contact Intel in US. -- Robert Andersson Voice +47 2 371055 International Systems A/S ra@intsys.no Fax +47 2 356448 P.O. Box 3356 ...!{uunet,mcsun,nuug}!intsys.no!ra 0405 Oslo 4, NORWAY