Viewing a non-bootable FAT32 drive over a network??

[carlos123]

Hi there,

I have two computer on a home network. They are both connected through a hub which in turn is connected to a DHCP server and firewall box which in turn is connected to a ADSL modem out to the Internet.

I can surf the Internet just fine between the two computers. Computer A has Windows 95. Computer B boots up with Linux but has a Windows 95 formatted FAT32 partition on it. Previously I had the hard drive with the FAT32 partition together with the Windows 95 drive in the same computer. And was just using it for backup purposes.

Without going into a whole lot of detail I now have it in the same computer with still another drive which has my Linux on it.

So I have computer A with a drive given entirely to Windows 95. And computer B with a FAT32 partitioned and non-bootable drive and a second drive with just Linux on it.

How can I access the contents of the non-bootable drive from my Windows 95 computer over my Ethernet network??

Is it a matter of getting a null modem cable and just replacing the Ethernet link whenever I want to access it? Is there some way to hook things up such that I can surf the Internet through my Ethernet network AND access the non-bootable drive at the same time? From my Windows 95 computer?

Any insight or suggestions would be very appreciated.

Thanks.

Carlos

 

[Rockn]

You probably need to use something like Samba on your Linux box to share the files. I am not sure if it is part of your installed distribution, but I am sure you can download it.

 

[gkimble]

Convert the drive to ntfs this way: c:/>convert c:ntfs and also share it.

 

[Rockn]

This is a Win95 and Linux environment and you cannot use the converntfs util since it's not a Windows platform.

 

[gkimble]

I guess the best thing for you is to go here and download Samba.

http://www.redhat.com/download/samba.html

 

[JohnWill]

Originally posted by gkimble:
Convert the drive to ntfs this way: c:/>convert c:ntfs and also share it.

The format of the partition has NO bearing on file sharing across a network! This has nothing to do with the issue.

 

[JohnWill]

Originally posted by Rockn:
This is a Win95 and Linux environment and you cannot use the converntfs util since it's not a Windows platform.

And you didn't even mention that it makes no difference anyway.

 

[gkimble]

.

 

[carlos123]

Thanks very much for the input. I appreciate it.

I have been looking at Samba. It looks like a bear to try to figure out - the documentation is filled with Greek and way too technical for a beginner to Linux like me to grasp quickly, though I will for sure keep tackling it's use.

It is indeed installed on my system. Just not set up yet.

The problem is that I will want to use the non-bootable drive as a regular Windows drive in terms of accesssing it, writing to it, deleting files from it, executing programs out of it (that don't require a Windows registry installation but do need to be run under Windows), and so forth.

I get the impression that while Samba is a great little product that it will not emulate a Windows drive so well that I can do everything on a Samba served drive as though it was a real Windows drive. I could be wrong of course and would appreciate a correction on thiis if indeed I am.

Isn't it possible to use a null modem cable and hook up through a NIC on each computer such that the non-bootable drive with FAT partition will be just as readily accesible as if it was on my Windows 95 computer itself?

Thanks again.

Carlos

PS. Rather than hassling with setting up Samba at this time perhaps I will just take my hard disk and put it back into my Windows computer for a while. Though I will then have the corresponding problem of trying to access my Linux data (that I have stored on that same hard disk - which is my data disk) from my Linux computer.

 

[JohnWill]

FWIW, you can't "link" the drive directly with a NIC, you need an O/S to access the drive and handle the network requests. Samba is capable of sharing the drive so you can use it just like any other network drive, and that's the route I'd be taking if I had this configuration.