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BeOS and NetWare

by Ed Sawicki - President
Accelerated Learning Center
Tailored Computers

Ever since I added my company to PANUG's Census page and listed BeOS as one of our client operating systems, people ask how we access files on our NetWare server from our BeOS machines. BeOS does not have NetWare client functionality built-in and I've not heard of anyone working on this - including Novell. So, it seems that there is no direct way to access a NetWare server from a BeOS box.

Well, there is a way - or rather there are ways. Here's a few ways of handling BeOS and NetWare connectivity. You may be able to think of other ways.

  1. One secret that Novell keeps better than most is that they have a SMB server for NetWare. Similar to the Samba software you might use on Linux, Novell's SMB server allows a NetWare server to talk to SMB clients such as Windows boxes. BeOS has SMB client functionality. You can make your BeOS box communicate with NetWare by fooling it into believing that the NetWare server is a Windows server.
  2. Since BeOS supports SMB client functionality, you can have it connect to your Linux box running the Samba software. Then use the Caldera NetWare client for Linux to connect to your NetWare server. Now setup a Samba share that points to your NetWare volume.
  3. BeOS can function as a NFS client and Linux can function as a NFS server. The Caldera NetWare client for Linux can connect to your NetWare server. The Linux NFS server can "publish" your NetWare volume to the NFS clients which include your BeOS boxes.

Simple.