VisionFS access thru the internet

[Aldert E. van der Laan]

Folks,

A customer wants me to look into the possibilities of giving satelite
offices access to directories via Windows to a SCO 5.0.5 box.
Currently they telnet into the server and run Filepro. The server has a
24/7 dialup connection to the internet and is running many services with
great succes.

I am running VisionFS 3 locally, but have not opened any ports to the Wan
yet.
There is no full time systems admin, my customer has outsourced this to the
company I work for.

Any of you people out there have some insights in this?

Aldert van der Laan

[Matt Schofield]

"Aldert E. van der Laan" wrote:
>
> Folks,
>
> A customer wants me to look into the possibilities of giving satelite
> offices access to directories via Windows to a SCO 5.0.5 box.
> Currently they telnet into the server and run Filepro. The server has a
> 24/7 dialup connection to the internet and is running many services with
> great succes.
>
> I am running VisionFS 3 locally, but have not opened any ports to the Wan
> yet.
> There is no full time systems admin, my customer has outsourced this to the
> company I work for.
>

It's certainly possible. The issues you should be aware of:

1. The satellite office PC's will need some way of resolving the
server's name to an IP Address e.g. WINS, lmhosts files. VisionFS won't
appear in their Network Neighbourhood. You should set up shortcuts or
mapped drives on the user's PC's.

2. You should set VisionFS up to filter connections to only allow access
from designated ranges of IP Addresses. See p88 of the VisionFS manual
on the CD or from http://www.sco.com/vision/eval/manuals.html. You
should also set the firewall to filter connections.

3. You should only need to open port 139 on the WAN as 137 and 138 also
used by VisionFS are for UDP packets and hence unneccessary over the
WAN.

4. You should set up VisionFS to use encrypted passwords (default)
otherwise clients may send UNIX passwords in plain text (as does telnet
and FTP). See p84-86 of the manual.

Regards

Matt Schofield
--
Return email address junked

[Aldert van der Laan]

On Fri, 17 Dec 1999 08:09:59 +0000, Matt Schofield
<mat...@sco.deletethisbit.com> wrote:

>>
>> I am running VisionFS 3 locally, but have not opened any ports to the Wan
>> yet.
>> There is no full time systems admin, my customer has outsourced this to the
>> company I work for.
>>
>
>It's certainly possible. The issues you should be aware of:
>
>1. The satellite office PC's will need some way of resolving the
>server's name to an IP Address e.g. WINS, lmhosts files. VisionFS won't
>appear in their Network Neighbourhood. You should set up shortcuts or
>mapped drives on the user's PC's.
>

I setup an Lmhosts file as well as a hosts file.
I am unable to connect to the main office, although I have enabled the
Netbios port 139 and read over the "manual" a thousand times.

I almost seems that the service is not bound to the dialup connection.
Could it be that the ISP is filtering out these connections?
As stated the people can telnet in and I even tried rlogin (which I
enabled before and disabled after the test).

I am using PPP from Morningstar on the server, could that cause a
problem maybe?

I can't seem to find any leads on the TA site of SCO.

It simply states it is possible.

Ah... well better get some Christmas dinner.....

Happy holidays,

Aldert

[Bob Willey]

You won't have NetBios over the Net, but you will have TCP Port 139.
(not having NetBios is why you won't see it in Network Neighborhood).
We are getting ready to enable the same thing on our firewalls, to allow
remote office access to VisionFS and also to VSI Fax remotely.

-> Bob Willey - b...@ccs.com <-
CCS Enterprises, Inc.
PO Box 35 Linkwood MD 21835
http://www.ccs.com Come Visit Us !!
http://www.intercom.net/user/consult
-> (410) 228-9211 -- FAX: (410) 901-1105 <-

[Bob Willey]

Just got finished testing this, and setting up TCP port 139 so that it is
passed in/out of the Firewall, allows VisionFS to work over a WAN/Internet.
Won't show us in Network Neighborhood, but doing a Start / Run
//machinename (and having the machine name listed in the
\Windows\lmhosts file)
and voila VisionFS shows up. Make sure the user/machine name is defined
in the VisionFS users, and also that WIN98 is setup for PlainTextPasswords
or else you will get the infamous "password incorrect" even though it is a
correct password.
Go to www.sco.com/ta and look up Windows 98 and you will see the article

Pretty slick actually.
I setup our firewalls on both sides to filter and only allow certain IP's
on port 139, thus giving an extra level of security.

Bob Willey - http://www.ccs.com/happyherbal.html