In this chapter we use MS Client to connect to a samba share on a GNU/Linux machine. In our example this is Debian GNU/Linux “Jessie”.

FreeDOS should be configured with a “Bridged Adapter” in VirtualBox networking. It should be booted with option 5 (TCP/IP). You don’t have to start anything else yet.

At first we need to create the share on the GNU/Linux machine:

1. Create a share

Open a GNU/Linux terminal and type as root:

mkdir /home/share

DOS will not login with a user name, so make the folder owned by “nobody”:

chown nobody:nogroup /home/share

With “chmod” set the UNIX permissions for the directory recursively (-R) for all (a) to “read” (r), “write” (w) and special execute (X). The “X” makes only directories executable (able to open), but not files. So command as root:

chmod -R a+rwX /home/share

2. Configure Samba

In our example we use a very simple smb.conf. DOS doesn’t use usernames and passwords to limit the access to files. Instead it allows or disallows access to shares. Now command as root:

nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

[global]

   workgroup = WORKGROUP
   lanman auth = yes
   client lanman auth = yes
   bind interfaces only = No
   map to guest = Bad user
   mangle prefix = 6

[share]

   path = /home/share
   comment = simple share
   guest ok = yes
   guest only = yes
   public = yes
   browseable = yes
   writeable = yes    
   read only = no
   create mask = 0644
   directory mask = 0777
   delete readonly = Yes
   dos filemode = Yes
   ; I added the following for MacOSX:
   veto files = /._*/.DS_Store/

Basically this means everybody is allowed to read and write to “/home/share”. Username and group are forced to be “nobody” and “no group”, so at least there is not much you can do with it.

In GNU/Linux restart samba:

/etc/init.d/samba restart

3. Connect

If you haven’t already done it, boot up the FreeDOS image in VirtualBox with option 5 (MS Client with TCP/IP).

In FreeDOS command:

net view

to see the other computers in your workgroup.

As you can see above, the GNU/Linux machine is called Debian8m. So let’s make a connection:

net use F: \\debian8m\share

In FreeDOS please start the Norton Commander Clone “Volkov Commander” with “nc”. Then change to drive “F:” by pressing ALT+F1.

You can now use the same share in the FreeDOS virtual box guest and your host system.

If you want to end the connection, type (in FreeDOS):

net use F: /delete