I have, in the past, mentioned that a number of readers were leery of moving to Linux servers because they feared they might lose NetWare's traditional highly granular file and folder permissions matrix. As I also mentioned, Novell assures me that Novell Storage Services would be ported to the SuSE Linux server platform in the upcoming release of Open Enterprise Server. So that's one major hurdle overcome. But there is one other (at least; I'm sure you'll tell me about more as time goes on).

Let's say you emulate Novell's current desktop migration, moving your users from Windows to Linux, perhaps using the GNOME graphical user interface that Novell favors (as opposed, say, to the KDE interface supported by other Linux distributors). Right away, you're going to notice what appears to be a glaring omission - there's no NetWare client for Linux.

How will your Linux-using users get to their files, applications and services on the NetWare servers? Is this Linux migration an all-or-nothing project? Well, no. And it turns out we have Windows (directly) and Microsoft (indirectly) to thank.

No, it's not that Microsoft did something positive, but that the typical homogeneity of Windows networks coupled with Redmond's intractability led to some open source work on file systems. Yes, the lack of a Linux client for NetWare leads us back around to file systems.

When Windows desktop users wanted to exchange files with Unix/Linux hosts, or Unix/Linux desktop users wanted resources from a Windows server they discovered that only through the use of tortuous FTP software could they do so. This was the impetus for Samba.

Samba is defined as an open source software suite that lets Microsoft and 'nix clients/servers exchange file and print services with each other. It's based on the Microsoft System Message Block (SMB) protocol (now called the Common Internet File System - CIFS), used by Windows clients and servers to exchange information.

There's a lot to Samba, and if you are interested you should acquire and read either "Inside Windows Storage: Server Storage Technologies for Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003 and Beyond" by Dilip Naik or "Implementing CIFS" by Christopher R. Hertel. The latter book has depth, but the former has a broad sweep across multiple file system protocols.

The SuSE Linux desktop has a Samba client. A NetWare 6.x server can look like a Samba host. That is, it can appear to be a Windows server.

(Remember the flap when Windows NT 4 came out with services to emulate a NetWare 3 server? Could this be Novell's revenge?)

So if you have NetWare 6 installed and if you introduce a SuSE desktop into the network then you'll want to read Novell Technical Information Document (TID) #10094880 (last modified on Oct. 5, 2004) titles "How to connect to a NetWare 6.5 server using Linux over Samba." It's well written, straightforward - it even has pictures and screen shots - and should have your Linux desktop happily conversing with your NetWare server in a matter of moments.