54. How do I put a CD-ROM Drive on a Ethernet by using a unix system (e.g. a SUN ) as a server and PCs as clients.

  Edmund J. Sutcliffe  writes:

  If you mount an ISO format CD-ROM on you sun using the commands previously

  mentioned in Question 34 and export it to the network using 

     # exportfs /cdrom

  It is then made available for mounting using NFS to other devices.



  The PC can mount the CD-ROM using any NFS Client including Sun's PC-NFS.

  (This is the product we use) Most PC search software requires the presence

  of MSCDEX to work with the CD-ROM. Daniel Churchman of Digital Solutions

  Pty Ltd, of Queensland Australia wrote a simplistic MSCDEX faker called

  MXSUB in May 1990 which they release under GNU Public License in January '92.

  This work well with early versions of the search software.Colin Ian King

   wrote a small quantitiy of C code which fakes the MSCDEX

  extensions required by many PC packages. He also produced a list of which

  search software used which MSCDEX functions. This code is released under

  GNU Public license and is available from ftp.york.ac.uk in /pub/cd-rom,

  via anonymous FTP. This faker can work with an Microsoft Compatible Network

  which can see CD-ROMs.



  It is also necessary sometimes to set the volume label of the NFS mounted

  drive. "Malcolm E. Sherrington"  in an article in the

  proceeding of the UKUUG confernce of January '93 talks about the problems

  in doing this. He wrote a program call NFSLABEL to label PC-NFS mounted

  Network Drives. However, this code was slow to be release and Robert

  Turner  wrote similar code called LABELNFS

  which is available in source form. All this code is available from

  ftp.york.ac.uk in /pub/pc-nfs. This code has been sucessfully used with

  BRS/Search SilverPlatter and WilsonDisk search software.

  The only CD-ROM search software which has been made available to me for

  testing purpose, on the Macintosh is SilverPlatters SPIRS. We have a

  GatorCS/Rack running GatorShare, an Apple Filing Protocol to NFS convert.

  (For more info mail support@cayman.com) This allows the Macs to see NFS

  file store as Appleshare Volumes. To mount CD-ROM to the Mac you must do

  the following:

     1) mount the CD-ROM on a Mac using a local CD-ROM. This

      will give you the Volume Name of the CD-ROM as seen to the Mac. 

     2) mount the CD-ROM on the NFS server.

     3) Using GatorKeeper, the management software for GatorShare create a

      new  AppleShare Volume called the same name as the volume when the

      CD-ROM was mounted locally. 

       This volume should mount the CD-ROM exported from the NFS server but the

     DESKTOP file should be create on some other section of NFS disk as it

     cannot be created on the CD-ROM. GatorKeeper will confirm the volume

     creation and then uses can mount the Volumes using the Chooser as usual.

  The user community can now mount the CD-ROM over the network to their Mac

  just like any other network volume and the SPIRS search software can us it.

  It is possible to Automate this mount and search software to make it

  transparent to the user and so limit usuage.



     It should be noted that it is important to license approriately copies

  of the CD-ROMs before exporting them generally over the network. You might

  also want to restrict access to appropriate netgroups. Also license

  locking the search software satisfies certain companies, but not all.

			Copyright ©1995 by ISOMEDIA, Inc. For Information, contact Ken Cheney