RISC OS file/printer sharing protocol specification
Egon Rath (2225) 49 posts |
Hello, |
David Boddie (1934) 222 posts |
I’m sure someone will be along to correct me but I’d be surprised if there’s either a public specification of the protocol or source code you can look at. That is if ShareFS happens to be the component you need to interact with, according to this post. I used to mess around with ShareFS a while ago, though I’d only briefly looked at how printers were being advertised across a network. James Woodcock tidied up and improved the code a lot, but I don’t think he added anything explicitly to do with printers. |
James Woodcock (307) 31 posts |
I didn’t touch the printer code, that I can remember. I thought you added most of that code, David. I have certainly used your code to enable RISC OS !Printers to use an AccessPlus Pythin ShareFS printer. This currently creates a PostScript file on the Linux fs. I seem to remember that the only thing missing from AccesssPlus Python is the bit of code that actually talks to the Linux printer. Should be easy enough to add that. I’m sure I can remind myself how it works if there are any questions. |
David Boddie (1934) 222 posts |
Hi James! I didn’t realise you were reading these forums. Now I look at the code, I see that there’s something to broadcast printer shares. I don’t remember writing it, but then it was written in 2003! |
James Woodcock (307) 31 posts |
Hi David. I keep an eye out on the forums. 2003 is a depressingly long time ago. I just took a look at the code and I realise I broke printing support. I’ll send a patch sometime this week. |
David Boddie (1934) 222 posts |
OK. There’s no rush! :-) |
Egon Rath (2225) 49 posts |
Thanks for the information, i didn’t knew that such a piece of software already exists – will have a look at it! |
h0bby1 (2567) 480 posts |
aaaaa |
Chris Evans (457) 1614 posts |
I might be blind but I can’t see anything on the page at https://bitbucket.org/dboddie/accesspluspython ‘AccesssPlus Python’ stating which OS it is for, I’m surmising it is Linux only. |
David Boddie (1934) 222 posts |
I’ve never tried it on Windows. It may work, if Windows happens to support all the socket and threading tricks it uses. Someone just needs to try it. |
James Woodcock (307) 31 posts |
I added some basic Windows support. It might be in the latest pull request I sent. It’s a long time since I looked at it on Windows. It wont work out of the box. You will probably need to modify the source to set the ip addres, netmask and broadcast address. I forget how the .access file gets opened. I think you will have a hard time setting a file’s RISC OS filetype if the shared disc is on a Windows box. I only tried it on Windows XP. |
David Boddie (1934) 222 posts |
Thanks, James! I’ve merged it in. I guess we’ll hear about it if it breaks for someone else! |
Steffen Huber (91) 1945 posts |
I am not sure why you think ShareFS s a good solution to solve any problem at all. The current ShareFS implementation has many drawbacks like being slow, unreliable and unsecure. If you want to share files, use NFS. If you want to share printers, use lpr. The only real advantage of ShareFS is that it works “out of the box” with most network-card-equipped RISC OS machines. But on the other hand, I remember nearly a thousand threads where someone complained that one box cannot see the shares of the other box… Actually, I can think of one scenario where it would be cool to have a ShareFS implementation on other OSes: to quickly transfer files from really old machines that happen to have a network podule with ShareFS in ROM. Would certainly be easier than fiddling with floppy discs, null modem cables or whatever. |
David Feugey (2125) 2687 posts |
I still have file corruptions on NFS. Try to edit HTML files on an NFS share with Zap… once every xxx saves, your file will end with unexpected characters. Not reliable at all. ShareFS is slow, but no problem of corruption so far. FTPs hangs every minute on a Pandaboard. |
Steffen Huber (91) 1945 posts |
I was using Acorn NFS for some time, then ImageNFS by WSS and now SunFish against various NFS servers. Never encountered a single case of file corruption. My whole software development process depends on NFS. Believe me, the Ada compiler would have detected file corruption :-) Do you know anyone else who has seen data corruption with RISC OS NFS clients or servers? What kind of servers have you tried? |
David Feugey (2125) 2687 posts |
RISC OS on both sides |
David Boddie (1934) 222 posts |
The most interesting application of ShareFS is something I never got round to trying: getting legacy RISC OS clients to do a network boot from a server, preferably into another OS. I remember talking to Thomas Olsson about ShareFS and I’d agree with Steffen that it’s insecure. I just followed a link to a document that Thomas wrote (but has not publicised) from which I’ll just borrow this statement: “If you can’t trust the entire network, this is not the protocol you want to use.” :-) Is there anything like sshfs on RISC OS? |
Steve Fryatt (216) 2053 posts |
I’ve not seen any TTBOMK; I use Sunfish to store my files and documents on an NFS server. |
David Feugey (2125) 2687 posts |
With Sunfish / Moonfish, to edit a file with Zap gives corrupted files after a few saves. Nota: the problem seems to be on the server side (a cortex-A9 motherboard). |