Subj : Re: Future-proofing DOS BBSs
To   : Ben Collver
From : AKAcastor
Date : Fri Feb 16 2024 20:46:14

AK> message and file bases, and communication between BBS nodes.

 BC> I am curious what is serving that network drive?

It's a Samba share in Ubuntu 20 - took a bit of trial and error to get it configured to allow an old enough protocol to be compatible with the DOS client, but it does seem to work well.  (aside from an ongoing issue where after some time accesses will fail with 'Too many open files' until I remount the drive)

Been a while since I set it up, but from what I remember the key points were:

- creating a user and password for the samba share (I think I used smbpasswd for this)

- setup in [global] section of /etc/samba/smb.conf
client max protocol = SMB3
client min protocol = CORE
min protocol = CORE
max protocol = SMB3
lanman auth = yes
client lanman auth = yes
client plaintext auth = yes
ntlm auth = yes

- add a share to the end of /etc/samba/smb.conf
[dosshare]
comment = dos share
path = /home/dosbox/share
browseable = yes
read only = no
guest ok = no
create mask = 0776
force create mode = 0776
security mask = 0776
force security mode = 0776
directory mask = 0777
force directory mode = 0777
directory security mask = 0777
force directory security mode = 0777

I am not sure if every setting I mention in smb.conf is necessary, but this is where I got to with it working.

On the client side - Microsoft Network Client 3.0 - I had to install TCP/IP (it only had NetBEUI by default). In AUTOEXEC.BAT a pile of stuff is run:

net initialize
netbind.com
umb.com
tcptsr.exe
tinyrfc.exe
emsbfr.exe
net start
net logon USER PASS
net use D: \\servername\dosshare

On boot it gets an IP address via DHCP, but I have had somewhat mixed results with being able to mount shares by the server name.  Usually it works but a couple times I have set it up and had trouble with name resolution.  To solve this I added my server name and IP to LMHOSTS in the Microsoft Network Client directory.

SHARE.EXE locking seems to work, and as a bonus I am able to access the share from my other computers to conveniently edit/move files around, etc.

 BC> I have been fantasizing about a similar configuration using ProBoard as
 BC> the BBS software.

I'd love to check that out!

 BC> Thanks for your notes about DOSBox-X.  I will be interested to see those
 BC> patches when you publish them.

Now that I mentioned them I will have to get off my ass and publish them ASAP!


akacastor

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 * Origin: Another Millennium - Canada - another.tel (21:1/162)

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