This file contains a very short introduction to the IPX implementation
on Linux.  Feel free to forward comments (especially suggested additions)
to greg@caldera.com.

--------------------------------------8<--------------------------------------
Since this mail address isn't valid anymore (2002-03-10), I took care of this
package myself and enhanced this to compile under recent kernel versions and
systems. Feel free to write me: poc@pocnet.net.
--------------------------------------8<--------------------------------------

The following are important definitions in understanding the descriptions
in this README file.

IPX Interface - This is the item to which IPX sockets are bound.
An IPX interface corresponds to an IPX Network Number which corresponds 
to a physical device and frame type.  A sample IPX Interface would be:
Network Number: 0x00ABCDEF
Device: Eth0 
Frame Type: 802.2.
The particular interface is selected during binding by using the
Network Number (see sample code below).

Primary Interface - The interface that is selected by default when
binding a socket.  This is selected when binding by using
a network number of 0 (see sample code below).

Internal Network - This is a special kind of IPX interface that does
not have a physical device or frame type.  It is used to provide
a route-independent address for service providers.   Internal network
numbers are optional; however, when one is present it is also the
Primary Interface.

This tar file contains the following IPX utilities:

ipx_interface.c
This program is used to create an IPX interface.  

ipx_internal_net.c
This program is used to create an IPX Internal Network number.  

ipx_route.c
This program creates an IPX route.

ipx_configure.c
This program is used to read/write two configuration parameters:
	AUTO INTERFACE CREATE - IPX should/shouldn't automatically create
		an IPX interface when it discovers one that has not been
		registered via ipx_interface above.
	AUTO PRIMARY SELECT - IPX should/shouldn't automatically select
		a primary interface when it one an interface exists and
		none are designated as the primary.  Manual designation
		is performed via ipx_interface.

By default, these are both turned off.
				
The following are sample IPX programs (found in directory Samples):

ipxrcv.c and ipxsend.c 
ipxsend will send a single packet to an instance of ipxrcv running on the 
same machine.  It uses getsockname(2) to determine the address to which to 
send the packet.  
rip.c
rip passively monitors the rip traffic on the attached IPX network.
sap.c
sap passively monitors the sap traffic on the attached IPX network.

There are three files in /proc/net/ipx that relate to IPX:
interface	contains the list of IPX interfaces.
route		contains the list of IPX routes.
socket		the list of IPX sockets in use.
This is a VERY stupid packet sniffer for IPX ethernet packets.

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If you are using unencrypted passwords, and use this tool to send a
dump to somebody else or store it on a computer, you might very well
store passwords there. So, be VERY careful! This is exactly the kind
of tools Novell designed the encrypted passwords for (or against).



I hacked it together to be able to help people with problems with
ncpfs. The socket handling was taken from Statnet-2.0.

You can use it to watch commercial NetWare clients when they talk to
servers. I divided the program into 2 parts, ipxdump and ipxparse.

ipxdump simply pumps all the IPX frames it receives to stdout.

If you use ipxdump to watch a workstation, you can use the simple
filter function ipxdump provides. You can call ipxdump with the node
address of the workstation you want to watch. This way only the
packets this workstation sends and receives are monitored. As an
example, I call ipxdump as

  ./ipxdump 00001B038B11

to look at my 286/10MHz test 'workstation'. ipxdump still generates
huge amounts of data, so you should be very careful to start it just
before you perform the operation (such as file creation for OS/2
clients with NW4.1 as a server, or a 'dir' on a directory with long
and short file names, or an encrypted password change ;-)) and stop it
directly after that. And, please gzip -9 and uuencode it before you
send it to anybody.

ipxparse will eventually take apart the dump that ipxdump
generates. They can as well be used in a pipe. Currently ipxparse does
not do anything sensible, but that will definitely change.

Volker Lendecke
<lendecke@namu01.gwdg.de>