[UFO Chicago] Non-IP file sharing?

[Christopher D. Heer]

Hey there.

I've got an Ubuntu box running as my in-home file/print server (and other
things, but that's not germane to the current discussion) and it works
great for that.  Except.

For work I have a laptop running XP.  I can't change that, unfortunately. 
I also have a VPN client (which I cannot change) that kills my IP access
to the local LAN by forcing XP's routes to all point to the tunnel
interface, and if I try manually changing the routes, the client drops.

I used to use an XP box as a file server, and all I did was turn on IPX or
NetBEUI on both the server and laptop, and everything was great.  I'm
looking for some kind of similar alternative on linux...basically file
sharing (and, if possible, print sharing, but that's not as important)
using something other than IP.

I looked into IPX first.  There's IPX support in the kernel, but Samba
doesn't use it.  I did find an old package (mars_nwe) but couldn't get it
functional, nor could I track down an example of someone who did get it
running under a modern distro.

I next looked into Appletalk, and netatalk seems simple enough, but alas,
Appletalk support is gone from XP, and the few third-party alternatives
for XP seem to also have vanished -- hardly a surprise.

I've seen mentions of NetBEUI (!) but haven't found anything real specific
yet.

So I'm looking for some kind of outside-the-box-type solution.  Any ideas?
-- 
  Christopher D. Heer -- cheer at heerfamily.net
  http://chrisheer.wordpress.com (blog)