From: df@eyrie.demon.co.uk (Derek Fawcus) Subject: Re: Novell IPX under DOS emulator? Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1993 20:42:31 +0000
In article <mjr.729205539@ursa> mjr@ursa.calvin.edu (Matt Ranney) writes:
> jmaclean@fox.nstn.ns.ca (James MacLean) writes:
>
> >> Yes.. horrible idea here, we provide the DOS emulator with a
> >>packet driver interface which will access the network card through the
> >>normal OS calls. Then you run PKTIPX.
> >>
> >>Derek Fawcus (G7FVS) df@eyrie.demon.co.uk
> > Yes, this would be great, even this would allow pdether, IPXODI
> >stacks. Then the DOS session could use all the DOS TCP/IP softwre.
>
> I vote for this too. If dosemu were powerful enough to run basic
> Novell utilities like syscon and friends, it would be very useful.
Hey,
I wasn't seriously suggesting that anyone does this, although possible
I consider it to be a ugly hack. A much better solution would be to
implement IPX/SPX sockets in the kernel network code (type AF_NOVELL)
and then presenting the IPX/SPX API from the dos emulator. This would
have the advantage that no IPX (or PKTIPX) would need to be loaded.
Implementing as I originally suggested would require working raw
sockets, (I can't remember what state they are currently in) and code
in the dos emulator to present the packet driver interface.
As IPX/SPX is (I believe) the only part of Netware that is publically
documented it should not be too hard. I happen to have a Novell book
(picked up in a book shop one lazy weekend) that describes the packet
format and that could be used as a starting point.
Actually, after rereading the above I think that the packet driver
approach could be used as a first hack (just for the hell of it) and
the AF_NOVELL as a second (final ?) method.
Anyway, this is all so much pie-in-the-sky, no one would actually be
sick enough to implement this, would they?
[ Then the next step would be to reverse engineer Netware (NETX.COM) to
give access (in a similar way to the NFS stubs and server) to the
fileserver for normal processes... :-) ]
DF
-- Derek Fawcus (G7FVS) df@eyrie.demon.co.uk