Simple. You don't even need a seperate physical NIC - you can create a virtual ethernet interface on top of your existing one (e.g. assuming ensp1, create ensp1:1 as a vif on top of it, with a unique IP). Of course with two physical interfaces this is already done for you.

Create a second smb.conf for this new instance.

Edit your two Samba configs to bind to explicit interfaces only (e.g. your primary one then *only* listens on ensp1, and your retro one listens on ensp1:1). You will probably need to modify the smb/nmb startup files to pick up the smb.conf from a different location, but that will be trivial.

I'd recommend different workgroup names for both, but again, nothing difficult there.

I don't see any need to create vm's, containers or anything like that - it's just a basic unix networking question; no more difficult than starting two versions of Apache on the same machine, two database servers etc. Each instance will be completely distinct, with its own logfiles, shares, config etc.

Of course, this is dodging the security question. But that's another thing entirely, and if you are happy to bring this up only as-needed, then the risk should be minimal.

Thanks megatron-uk! Somehow I forgot about typical *nix daemons possibilities to add separate conf file as parameter.
This solution will work as long distributions will include v1 protocol functions in distro package. It could be that in the future it will be removed. Then I can however always compile old version manually - that's the linux beauty.

Anyways I have been reading up about cleaner NAS OS solutions. Something like OMV+Docker opens up many easily maintainable services (pihole, home cloud) possibilities, so I think eventually I will go this route.

In my lab room, i have a simple debian-based VM that mounts modern SMB shares from my NAS and then reshares them with SMBv1 and FTP. I boot that VM up when i need it for my retro stuff. And when i don't need it, i don't keep anything exposed through those older protocols.

Works beautifully.

vutt wrote on 2025-01-05, 12:42:

5) Or any other solution?

My preference would be MarsNWE in a VM with its NIC bridged to the retro LAN, rather than an old version of Samba. MarsNWE is to NetWare what Samba is to Windows Server, and IME its a lot easier to get DOS, OS/2 and vintage windows talking to something that looks like a NetWare server rather than something that really wants to look like a modern Windows Server. And while the old NetWare protocols are no more secure than SMBv1, they're only exposed over IPX so it would be much harder to attack MarsNWE than an old version of Samba.

Otherwise, I'd just run Windows NT Server 4.0, Windows 2000 Server, or Novell NetWare proper in a VM and just deal with the fact that the vintage server VM will have its own storage and getting stuff on to it from a modern machine will be a little annoying. If I was using NT4/Win2k server, I'd install Microsoft Services for NetWare (like MarsNWE but from Microsoft and for Windows) so that I could use the much more light-weight NetWare clients on DOS machines rather than Microsofts absurdly memory hungry SMB client for DOS.

(There is also an unfinished modern Rust implementation of a NetWare server for Linux and Windows, and frommel, an older unmaintained but much more complete implementation from the same author for FreeBSD. Perhaps eventually someone could pick one of these up and maintain/finish them off.)

Thank you for your replays!

This little question actually triggered me to dive full into Home Lab rabbit hole over this weekend.
Ended up upgrading to OMV7 with proper Docker and KVM setup. It went surprisingly smooth. Most of the time went for learning Docker ins and outs. Docker alone is fantastic tool. Why I waited so long...
Found suitable apline linux based image with v4.16 Samba. Set it up and cloned customized one for my needs.
So my retro subnet consist of one direct twisted pair cable between my NAS secondary NIC and Win98 Tualatin box - very secure. I was amazed that late 90-is 3Com NIC was able to connect this way.
Also ended up also installing Win98 VM. I did not know that KVM on Linux is Type 1 hypervisor with very little overhead.
Containers/VM-s will provide nice time machine type of opportunities to try out different versions.