Introduction

Many people need to access their Novell network drives from within Ubuntu. This page describes how to mount your Novell network drives so that you can read and write to them.

Install Required Packages

Novell servers use the NCP protocol for network drives. We need to install support for this protocol by installing some packages.

1. You must enable the Universe repository before installing these packages.

2. Click on "System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager" to start Synaptic.

3. Search for "ncpfs"
4. Choose to install "ncpfs"
5. Click "Apply" and allow it to install any required dependencies

Create the directory

1. Create a new directory called "/media/novell"

   • Click on: "Applications>Accessories>Terminal"

   • Run this command: "sudo mkdir /media/novell"
2. Change permissions so that your user can access it. Be sure to use your actual username on the Linux system
   • Run this command: "sudo chown yourusername:yourusername /media/novell"
3. (Optional) Create a link so the folder will be available on your desktop. Be sure to use your actual username again
   • Run this command: "ln -s /media/novell /home/yourusername/Desktop/novell"

If the directory is under /media, then you can access your Novell shares from the Places menu and from file chooser windows, just like a USB drive.

An Icon to Mount the Drive

Your system is now ready for you to mount the Novell network drives. This can be done at the command prompt, but most users will want to create desktop icons to mount and unmount their network drives.

1. Right-click on the desktop and choose "Create launcher"
2. Click on "Icon" and choose the picture of the green apple. (Green is for GO)
3. Click on the "Command" tab and select "Application in terminal"
4. Paste this command into the field labeled "Command"
   • ncpmount -S yourservername -A yourservernamefqdn -U novellusername -V volumename /media/novell
   • (Be sure to edit each of the fields with your information)
   • novellusername is your full username, including your context. (e.g. user.employees.company)
   • You can leave out -V volumename and /media/novell will contain all of your Novell volumes.

An Icon to Unmount the Drive

Once the network drive is mounted, you may want to unmount the drive. To do this, we can create another desktop launcher to run the unmount command.

1. Right-click on the desktop and choose "Create launcher"
2. Click on "Icon" and choose the picture of the red apple. (Red is for STOP)
3. Click on the "Command" tab and select "Application in terminal"
4. Paste this command into the field labeled "Command"
   • ncpumount /media/novell

For more information (including screenshots) go to this blog: How to mount Novell network drives

Note: The content on this page should be merged with AccessingNetwareShares.