Mount a Mapped Drive as a Subdirectory

[Kevin Murphy]

Currently I have an application that will not run anywhere buy locally
from the installed C: drive. I have three PC's that need to be able to
access the data from the application (not at the same time, so record
locking isn't an issue). It's an older Foxpro app that uses a runtime
that does not understand mapped drives. So, my thought was to try to
access the shared resource from the PC with the data on it and mount
it as a subdirectory on the other two PC's.

There is no server at this location (yet). So DFS and folder
redirection is out. Subst would just give me another drive letter,
which the application pukes on. At this point I was thinking maybe an
NFS client would give me a transparent mapping to a subdirectory, but
not having much luck with that either. Has anyone had success with
this? Any ideas would be appreciated!

 

[Phillip Windell]

I don't know of a way to do what you are saking. You might be better off
seeing if you can get a newer version of the App that has been fixed. If
this is a custom written thing, are the developers still available to have
them correct it?

One way to approach this it to only have the App located in one place. Map a
drive at each machine to this one place all using the same drive letter.
Then on one machine "install" the App to this new empty location, then on
subsequent machines install the App again over the top of itself. Now the
App will run and see the Data as being local to itself and may run properly
then.

We have done this with one old App by all machines having mapped an "F:"
drive to one common location, then when installing the App (Setup.exe?) it
is pointed to "F:\<programname>" as the installation point, then repeat the
process on all machines that need it.

 

[Kevin Murphy]

Unfortunately, the application in question is in the process of being
rewritten, and the app vendor doesn't really have a good answer for
when it will be available as a networked application.

I tried the install to the mapped drive method without much luck. App
still tries to pull information from
"F:\\machinename\sharename\correct subdir name". It's actually a
problem with the foxtools.fll file that the app is using as a program
wrapper. Nothing to be done then unless or until the app is fixed or
they get a server. Thanks for the reply!

I don't know of a way to do what you are saking. You might be better off
seeing if you can get a newer version of the App that has been fixed. If
this is a custom written thing, are the developers still available to have
them correct it?

One way to approach this it to only have the App located in one place. Map a
drive at each machine to this one place all using the same drive letter.
Then on one machine "install" the App to this new empty location, then on
subsequent machines install the App again over the top of itself. Now the
App will run and see the Data as being local to itself and may run properly
then.

We have done this with one old App by all machines having mapped an "F:"
drive to one common location, then when installing the App (Setup.exe?) it
is pointed to "F:\<programname>" as the installation point, then repeat the
process on all machines that need it.

--

Phillip Windell [MCP, MVP, CCNA]
www.wandtv.com

Currently I have an application that will not run anywhere buy locally
from the installed C: drive. I have three PC's that need to be able to
access the data from the application (not at the same time, so record
locking isn't an issue). It's an older Foxpro app that uses a runtime
that does not understand mapped drives. So, my thought was to try to
access the shared resource from the PC with the data on it and mount
it as a subdirectory on the other two PC's.

There is no server at this location (yet). So DFS and folder
redirection is out. Subst would just give me another drive letter,
which the application pukes on. At this point I was thinking maybe an
NFS client would give me a transparent mapping to a subdirectory, but
not having much luck with that either. Has anyone had success with
this? Any ideas would be appreciated!

 

[Phillip Windell]

"F:\\machinename\sharename\correct subdir name". It's actually a
problem with the foxtools.fll file that the app is using as a program

Ah! Ok. Yea I've seen this issue with software from UPS (United Parcel
Service). After fighting with it a while I got it to work, but we have since
stop using it (and UPS) because their rates were higher than the others. We
now work with FedEx and they use a Website instead of giving you software to
install.