Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions

Q: What is NetDrive?

A: NetDrive for OS/2 is a virtual file system which allows one to create a virtual volume and mount various resources to the volume.

Q: Which resources are supported?

A: NetDrive for OS/2 supports local, network and FTP resources and can use external plugins for other resources.

Q: Which resources could be supported?

A: The brief and incomplete list of these:

• scp (secure copy) based on SSH (Secure Shell);
• ISO CD images;
• SMB and CIFS (Common Internet Filesystem);
• VFAT and NTFS file systems;
• ZIP or other archives.

Q: Are there any third party plugins?

A: Please check the plugins page for available plugins.

Q: What is the future for this tool?

A: It will be an universal virtual file system for OS/2 that will allow you to use virtually any resource. NetDrive's external plugins can greatly simplify implementation of various network and local file systems.

Q: What is the difference between version 1.x and 2.x?

A: NetDrive version 1.x supports only LOCAL and FTP resources those implemented as internal plugins. On the contrary, NetDrive v2.x can use external plugins for almost any type of resource.

Q: How do you use a resource with NetDrive for OS/2?

The following steps must be performed to use a resource:

• create a NDFS volume. This is done by attach command.

  nd attach s:

• create a mount point which the resource will be mounted to.

  nd createmp s:\localc

• mount the resource to the created mountpoint. This example mounts local drive c:\ to the s:\localc mountpoint in read-only mode. Now the c:\ directory can be used as s:\localc.

  nd mount local s:\localc c:\ r
  

• unmount the resource by ndunmount utility.

  nd unmount s:\localc 0

• delete the mountpoint.

  nd deletemp s:\localc

• delete the NDFS volume.

  nd detach s:

Q: How to mount a root directory of a unix ftp server?

NetDrive mounts the user's home directory by default:

nd mount ftp s:\server server rw

nd mount ftp s:\server server/ rw.

In order to mount root directory one has to use two slashes:

nd mount ftp s:\server server// rw

When a ftp resource is mounted using the NetDrive Control Panel, just leave the Directory field empty to login to the home directory or specify one slash '/' to login to the root.

Troubleshooting

Q: WPS hangs when a NetDrive directory is opened. Why?

A: Actually this is a problem of WPS not NetDrive. When WPS opens a folder it reads information about files in the folder. It is necessary to display file's icons correctly. WPS blocks while the file information is being read. When connection to a FTP server is slow then reading the information may take significant amount of time. So WPS would block. In order to avoid this problem do not use WPS for slow FTP sites.