Things common to these help files:

The disk drive specification d: is used in all the examples. Replace d: with the drive letter of your OS/2 boot disk.

NetBIOS = Network Basic Input Output System

Setting up a PEER network

The first thing that is required is that the NETBIOS protocol be running on your network adapter. If you are not sure, you can run MPTS, also known as "Adapters and Protocol Services" in your System Setup folder. Your network adapter should have the "IBM OS/2 NETBIOS" protocol attached to it. You may also have "IBM TCP/IP" if you are also running TCP/IP on that adapter. See The difference between PEER and TCP/IP.

Each machine must have a unique machine name, and although not necessary, it helps if they are all in the same domain. Don't confuse the PEER computer name and domain with the TCP/IP computer name and domain. They are not the same thing. See The difference between PEER and TCP/IP. Normally you select the machine name and domain when you install PEER. To see what the current name and domain is, open "Shared Resources and Network Connections" in Connections->Network->Network Services. You can change the primary domain there, but if you want to change the computer name see Changing your computer name and domain after installation.

The next thing is to make sure that PEER services are started on boot up. You could check the check box that says "Start LAN services at system startup" on the "Identity" page of "Shared Resources and Network Connections". All this does is place an object in your startup folder that indirectly runs a "NET START PEER" command. I prefer not to check that box, and create my own StartNet.CMD file that contains the following 2 lines:

NET START PEER
LOGON USER /P:PASSWORD

I put this file (or a shadow of it) in the startup folder. Of course, you need to substitute your own USER and PASSWORD for USER and PASSWORD in the above example. You can use the username and password that you selected when installing PEER networking. Doing the LOGON in the startup script prevents that Logon dialog from popping up the first time you access the PEER network. The other advantage to this approach is that you can add other commands to the StartNet.CMD file. This would be the place to put anything that you want to run on boot up, but that requires that the network be running first. For example, the command to set your time to a server's time:

net time \\A-SERVER /set /yes

The next thing to do is setup all the resources you want to share. As always with OS/2 there are multiple ways of doing this. You can right click on the object you want to share, then click on "Properties" or on "Start Sharing". Or you can use the "Shared Resources and Network Connections" program. In this document I will describe how to use the "Shared Resources and Network Connections" program, although the other methods look almost exactly the same.

This section not finished yet.

Changing your computer name and domain after installation

Edit the file d:\IBMLAN\IBMLAN.INI with any plain text editor. Find the lines in the [requester] section that begins with COMPUTERNAME and DOMAIN. These lines might looks like this:

  COMPUTERNAME = NODE1234
  DOMAIN = IBMPEERS

You can change these to whatever you want:

  COMPUTERNAME = MYLAPTOP
  DOMAIN = MYNETWORK

You do not need to reboot to make these changes take effect, but you do need to stop and restart the network. Open an OS/2 window and type the following commands:

NET STOP PEER
NET START PEER

Of course, you can simply reboot, too, if you like.

Putting your system into multiple domains

Edit the file d:\IBMLAN\IBMLAN.INI with any plain text editor. Find the line in the [requester] section that begins with "othdomains". Normally this line looks like this:

  othdomains =

You can change it to include a number of domains separated by commas:

  othdomains = WORKGROUP,MYDOMAIN,TEST

You do not need to reboot to make these changes take effect, but you do need to stop and restart the network. Open an OS/2 window and type the following commands:

NET STOP PEER
NET START PEER

Of course, you can simply reboot, too, if you like.

Making Windows access an OS/2 PEER network

Windows and OS/2 actually talk to each other fairly well using NETBIOS. You can share files and printers using File and Print Sharing on Windows and PEER on OS/2. Just about the only requirement is that both machines be speaking the same protocol. This section assumes that you already have a working OS/2 PEER network and focuses on how to configure the Windows machine to access that network.

1. Open My Computer, then Control Panel, then Network.
2. Click on the Identification tab and fill in the 3 fields there. Everything gets easier and more frendly if the Workgroup is the same as the OS/2 Domain, but things will still work if they are not the same. No two machines may have the same Computer name.
3. Click on the Configuration tab. You should have the following items there. If not, click Add and add them.
   • Client for Microsoft Networks
   • Some kind of network adapter
   • NetBEUI
   • You may also have TCP/IP, but this is not used for file and print sharing.
   • File and printer sharing for Microsoft Networks

   You should not need to set any of the properties for these items. There may be other items in the list, for dial up networking or other things like that. You can leave them if you like. They should not interfere with file and print sharing. When adding items, look under Microsoft.

4. Click on the File and Print Sharing button and check the services you want.
5. Click on OK and the system will install some files and reboot.

When the system reboots is should be ready to access the network. To make a drive sharable, you must go to My Computer, right click on a drive, and click on Sharing. The same for printers.

Note that the Windows machine will be able to see long file names on the OS/2 machines, but the OS/2 machines will not see the long file names on the Windows machines. The OS/2 machines will see the files, but will see the mangled names (Progra~1). It does not matter what type of file system each system is using (FAT16, FAT32, HPFS, or whatever).