Windows NFS Services, Unix, and Linux

We have a Windows NT server with Microsoft's Services for Unix installed. It
was apparently easy to setup on the Windows side, but a Unix user had a lot
of trouble mounting it and having read/write permissions on it. The Windows
side didn't change and somehow the user resolved their end and is able to
mount it and have read/write access. We tried to setup a Fedora Core3 to
mount this same share and it mounts and provides read-only access. We're not
completely sure the issue lies on the Linux/Unix side, but we've set it all
up to mirror the working Unix setup. No luck though. Graphically, the mount
is showing full permissions, but access is denied when writing, deleting,
etc.

So, we also have a Windows 2003 server and enabled a NFS share and services
on it. We have the same read-only problem with both the Unix and Linux
client. We've set it on the Windows said to complete unrestricted access,
but still no good.

We have the same usernames and password in each environment, have done user
name mapping, etc, etc

Can anyone offer any ideas on this?

In comp.os.linux.networking Steve <(E-Mail Removed)>:
> We have a Windows NT server with Microsoft's Services for Unix installed. It
[..]

> Can anyone offer any ideas on this?

Yep, do yourself a big favor and install/configure samba to
provide file sharing to doze clients. Linux should have no
problems mounting network windows shares directly.

http://www.icon.co.za/~psheer/book/
http://www.samba.org/

Should be helpful.

Good luck

--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo (E-Mail Removed) | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 48: bad ether in the cables

Steve wrote:
> We have a Windows NT server with Microsoft's Services for Unix installed. It
> was apparently easy to setup on the Windows side, but a Unix user had a lot
> of trouble mounting it and having read/write permissions on it. The Windows
> side didn't change and somehow the user resolved their end and is able to
> mount it and have read/write access. We tried to setup a Fedora Core3 to
> mount this same share and it mounts and provides read-only access. We're not
> completely sure the issue lies on the Linux/Unix side, but we've set it all
> up to mirror the working Unix setup. No luck though. Graphically, the mount
> is showing full permissions, but access is denied when writing, deleting,
> etc.
>
> So, we also have a Windows 2003 server and enabled a NFS share and services
> on it. We have the same read-only problem with both the Unix and Linux
> client. We've set it on the Windows said to complete unrestricted access,
> but still no good.

This is typically because the server and client can't work out username
mapping, so the client mounts the share with anonymous access, which is
read only.

>
> We have the same usernames and password in each environment, have done user
> name mapping, etc, etc

Double, and triple check your username mappings...

>
> Can anyone offer any ideas on this?

I ran into something similar when I was playing with Windows Services
for Unix about a year ago. I did get it resolved, but honestly I don't
remember exactly what the solution was...While there are some kind of
cool things with WSU, there was no compelling reason ( for us ) to keep
using it.

But, I do remember there was some useful info in the newsgroup/forum.
I'd check the link here :
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu...rt/default.asp
or see if your news server carries microsoft.public.servicesforunix.general

--
- Matt -

Thanks for the info and responses. I may have found a solution.
In Linux if I mount it using "mount -o uid=xx, gid=xx //Server/Share /Path"
where the uid and gid is logged in users group and user id # then it does
seem to work. Our user name mapping is extremely simple in the first place,
so I am nearly certain it is all correct, but I wonder if there is an issue
passing or accepting the user info between Linux and Windows at least. I
will have to try a similar thing on our Unix and see what happens.


"Matt Payton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> I ran into something similar when I was playing with Windows Services for
> Unix about a year ago. I did get it resolved, but honestly I don't
> remember exactly what the solution was...While there are some kind of cool
> things with WSU, there was no compelling reason ( for us ) to keep using
> it.
>
> But, I do remember there was some useful info in the newsgroup/forum. I'd
> check the link here :
> http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu...rt/default.asp
> or see if your news server carries
> microsoft.public.servicesforunix.general


> Steve wrote:
>> We have a Windows NT server with Microsoft's Services for Unix installed.
>> It
>> was apparently easy to setup on the Windows side, but a Unix user had a
>> lot
>> of trouble mounting it and having read/write permissions on it. The
>> Windows
>> side didn't change and somehow the user resolved their end and is able to
>> mount it and have read/write access. We tried to setup a Fedora Core3 to
>> mount this same share and it mounts and provides read-only access. We're
>> not
>> completely sure the issue lies on the Linux/Unix side, but we've set it
>> all
>> up to mirror the working Unix setup. No luck though. Graphically, the
>> mount
>> is showing full permissions, but access is denied when writing, deleting,
>> etc.

The only issue with doing this is that the Windows server already resides on
a redundant and custom security featured server becasue of somes reasons.
ie, it is a server with normal set of redundant power supplies, fans, RAID
5, with on online set of spare drives, but it has some custom physical
security characteristics in its environment, hardware, and software. We
likely could not afford a second such device and it would be less than ideal
to have Samba on a lesser device when the existing should be able to solve
it.

We may have come up with a solution that we are looking into. If we mount
the share and include the options for uid and gid in the mount, then the
access privledges so far seem to work out properly.

Thanks for the response though!

Michael Heiming" <michael+(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:0sprh2-(E-Mail Removed)...
> In comp.os.linux.networking Steve <(E-Mail Removed)>:
>> We have a Windows NT server with Microsoft's Services for Unix installed.
>> It
> [..]
>
>> Can anyone offer any ideas on this?
>
> Yep, do yourself a big favor and install/configure samba to
> provide file sharing to doze clients. Linux should have no
> problems mounting network windows shares directly.
>
> http://www.icon.co.za/~psheer/book/
> http://www.samba.org/
>
> Should be helpful.
>
> Good luck
>
> --
> Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
> mail: echo (E-Mail Removed) | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
> #bofh excuse 48: bad ether in the cables

In comp.os.linux.networking Steve <(E-Mail Removed)>:
> The only issue with doing this is that the Windows server already resides on
> a redundant and custom security featured server becasue of somes reasons.
> ie, it is a server with normal set of redundant power supplies, fans, RAID
> 5, with on online set of spare drives, but it has some custom physical
> security characteristics in its environment, hardware, and software. We
> likely could not afford a second such device and it would be less than ideal
> to have Samba on a lesser device when the existing should be able to solve
> it.

> We may have come up with a solution that we are looking into. If we mount
> the share and include the options for uid and gid in the mount, then the
> access privledges so far seem to work out properly.

Glad to hear it works for you, but can't really follow? Linux is
able to directly mount doze network shares in a second with a
single line in /etc/fstab like this:

//box/share /mnt/doze smbfs defaults,users 0 0

--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo (E-Mail Removed) | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 415: Maintenance window broken

We have a Windows NTFS share that originally needed to have an old version
of Unix access it. We were told it could not directly read-write a NTFS
file system and we needed to have NFS sharing or services for Unix setup the
NTFS share for it to work. We got it running and had initial issues with the
Unix user having read-only access. Somehow the Unix user corrected that and
had read-write. That user is not longer here. We duplicated this on a 2nd
share. Today's Unix user had the issue of read-only again and doesn't know
what the previous person did.

As a mean of trying to help the Unix user and just for my own learning, I
had been starting to get into some Linux systems. I am very much a newbie at
it. However, I thought it would be interesting to see what happened if I
tried to do the same process from Linux. I ended up with the same results -
ie, I could read, but not write.

So, ultimately I was trying to duplicate the Unix scenario on Linux such
that I could try various things both for my own learning and to aid the Unix
user.

Shifting gears on you a bit though now, you've brought up something I
didn't know and am interested in.

A Linux box can directly mount a Windows server share? I was under the
impression that Linux was not able to read/write to NTFS. Am I way wrong or
was that an issue of the past?? It isn't my area so I might not have all the
info, but we have a piece of equipment that is running from a RedHat 6.2
Linux system. Should I be able to directly mount and use a Windows NTFS
share on this too? Would Linux based software be able to read-write to the
share as if it were native? ie, this RedHat 6.2 machine runs a custom
equipment interface that reads a file off the RedHat system and sends it to
the machine to program it. If RedHat 6.2 itself can mount, read, write, etc
to a Windows share - would it be reasonable to expect that the applications
can read and write to that point as well?

thanks very much!


"Michael Heiming" <michael+(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:iqoth2-(E-Mail Removed)...
> In comp.os.linux.networking Steve <(E-Mail Removed)>:
> > The only issue with doing this is that the Windows server already
resides on
> > a redundant and custom security featured server becasue of somes
reasons.
> > ie, it is a server with normal set of redundant power supplies, fans,
RAID
> > 5, with on online set of spare drives, but it has some custom physical
> > security characteristics in its environment, hardware, and software. We
> > likely could not afford a second such device and it would be less than
ideal
> > to have Samba on a lesser device when the existing should be able to
solve
> > it.
>
> > We may have come up with a solution that we are looking into. If we
mount
> > the share and include the options for uid and gid in the mount, then the
> > access privledges so far seem to work out properly.
>
> Glad to hear it works for you, but can't really follow? Linux is
> able to directly mount doze network shares in a second with a
> single line in /etc/fstab like this:
>
> //box/share /mnt/doze smbfs defaults,users 0 0
>
> --
> Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
> mail: echo (E-Mail Removed) | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
> #bofh excuse 415: Maintenance window broken

In comp.os.linux.networking Steve <(E-Mail Removed)>:
[..]

> A Linux box can directly mount a Windows server share? I was under the
> impression that Linux was not able to read/write to NTFS. Am I way wrong or
> was that an issue of the past?? It isn't my area so I might not have all the

Read should be no problem, write might not be intended for
production use, but I don't follow this so things might have
improved to some extend.

Anyway, things are different with *network* (smbfs) doze shares
those work perfectly read/write, at least with kernel >=2.4.

You need to look up the docs, can't remember 2.2 which RH 6.2
(IIRC) uses anymore, it's probably about 5 years ago or so using
kernel 2.2. It had so many limitations for serious vm changes you
had to edit the source code and recompile the kernel and
what-else, never looked back after 2.4 was out.

[..]

BTW
Could you please stop top-posting, thx.

--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo (E-Mail Removed) | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 418: Sysadmins busy fighting SPAM.

Just to chime in my $0.02 - OK, this is not strictly 100% related,
but if it helps I am also just mapping Windows shares directly from the
Linux clients.

The thing I thought you might find useful is this: I have been
setting up my Linux hosts to use winbind, as our company primarily uses
Win2K/Active Directory for authentication.

It was a pain having each Linux host a separate fife and Kingdom,
with separate accounts, etc... Letting AD manage authentication gives
me the added bonus of being able to permission the local EXT3 file
system via existing Domain Groups, as well as letting me use those
groups in the sudoers file - woohoo!

I found the following article particularly helpful, the whole thing
took less than 10 minutes to set up, test, and have working perfectly.

http://www.redmondmag.com/columns/ar...itorialsID=858

HTH!