Often referred to by its acronym CSNW, Client Services for NetWare is a client redirector, which allows a Windows 2000-based system to connect and authenticate to a NetWare-based server and access the file system. CSNW should be installed when clients need to regularly access NetWare file or print servers. Often, CSNW is not installed in favor of the native Novell client for NetWare, which ships with the Netware product. Installing CSNW is accomplished by choosing to install a Client in the properties of a connection object.
It is worth noting that the installation of CSNW on a Windows 2000 Server is actually done as part of the installation of Gateway Services for NetWare, or GSNW. GSNW will also automatically install NWLink if it hasn’t already been installed on the system. On a Windows 2000 Professional system, an option exists for installing CSNW alone.
Once installed, configuration of the client and gateway elements is actually handled via the GSNW applet in Control Panel. The configuration includes the selection of either a preferred server (in a bindery-based NetWare environment) or of a default tree and context (in an NDS-based environment).
Gateway Services for NetWare is meant to be used in environments in which clients require less frequent access to NetWare-based servers. GSNW makes a Windows 2000 Server act as a gateway (or access point) to resources located on a NetWare server. Using GSNW allows you to eliminate the need for each client system to have CSNW or NWLink installed. Instead, clients access a shared folder on the Windows 2000 system running GSNW, which in turn allows them access to files and folders on the associated NetWare server. In order to configure Windows 2000 as a gateway, a gateway account must be configured using GSNW in Control Panel.
The account used must exist on the NetWare server, and must be a member of a group created on the NetWare server called NTGATEWAY. You must also ensure that the NTGATEWAY group has appropriate trustee rights to access resources on the NetWare server. Once the account has been set up, one or more shares must be created that access the netware server.
In this example, when users access the share called ‘netware’ on the Windows 2000 server, they will actually be accessing the folder ‘resources’ on NetWare server NW1.
