Linux: February 2008 Archives

Having solved the issue of mounting novell volumes using ncpmount, the next hurdle I face is the annoying bug that openoffice does not allow you to update word docs if you have file locking set to auto.

You can set file locking to no which means that other users can also open that same file on that share. This is not a desirable outcome. Openoffice are aware of this but do not seem to be addressing the issue.

Having built a new kernel from scratch I can confirm that it seems to be an application issue. With this in mind I have decided to remove my open office apps from my laptop and install staroffice. Hopefully this version will not have the same problem.

A colleague pointed out the following solution for ncpmount.

Instead of using feisty configure synapatic to use gutsy proposed (packages that haven’t found their way into the distribution i.e well tested beta, with a new april release they will appear in 8.04) and gutsy backport (latest versions that are not being proposed to appear in gutsy but will appear in 8.04)

Open Synaptics Package Manager
Click Settings – Repositories
Click the Updates Tab
Check/enable the pre-released (gutsy proposed)
Check/enable Unsupported-updates(gutsy-backports)

Even though this is beta s/w it is far more desirable solution than using the feisty fawn repositories as you are getting later versions rather than older versions which reduces your security risk/exposure.

A big thank you to Eugene for this tip.

If you use ncpmount to mount novell servers you may have noticed that it does not work with ubuntu 7.10 (gutsy).
Ncpfs 2.2.6.4 that ships with gutsy is the problem as it causes an invalid server response message to be generated by the Novell server. The solution is to force the version to 2.2.6.3 which ships with feisty.

You need to add feisty repositories to source.lst and run apt-get update twice

repositories to add

deb http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty universe
deb-src http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty universe
deb http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty-updates universe
deb-src http://ie.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty-updates universe

you then need to load synaptic package manager search for ncpfs and force the version to 2.2.6.3. I would also recommend that you lock this version so it can't be updated