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How can SCO sue Linus for infringing patents and copyrights that Novel owns?

It turns out Novell already has several red pills. Their iFolder product is one of the coolest things since sliced bread, and it runs on Linux. Their ZENworks for Servers products can centrally manage many servers - including doing patch management for Linux servers. No prize for guessing they probably are working on a ZENworks for Linux Desktops. If it's true we're in for a real treat! Anyone know what other products they make that run on Linux?

It turns out Novell already has several red pills. Their iFolder product is one of the coolest things since sliced bread, and it runs on Linux. Their ZENworks for Servers products can centrally manage many servers - including doing patch management for Linux servers. No prize for guessing they probably are working on a ZENworks for Linux Desktops. If it's true we're in for a real treat! Anyone know what other products they make that run on Linux?

Really bad html in my prev. post and a wrong link to boot. So here is the right one
You probably can support Novell by joining Novell Forge and helping write some opensource software.
Thanks Novell. First for UDDI and now for this.just don't change your mind.
Also this development begs the question "What exactly did Microsoft buy from SCO?"

Here is Novell's informative press release on the matter. A juicy excerpt:

"SCO continues to say that it owns the UNIX System V patents, yet it must know that it does not. A simple review of U.S. Patent Office records reveals that Novell owns those patents.

"Importantly, and contrary to SCO's assertions, SCO is not the owner of the UNIX copyrights. Not only would a quick check of U.S. Copyright Office records reveal this fact, but a review of the asset transfer agreement between Novell and SCO confirms it."

Of course, this doesn't address the "source code theft" issues, but hopefully this will shut SCO up about the UNIX IP issues.

We use Groupwise in my agency, which is much lower cost than exchange, since Novell cuts us some pretty good deals on state contract. But we need to communicate to other people - the central IT agency for the city currently mandates that we maintain an exchange gateway, since there is no anti-virus product I can find that can scan attachments in groupwise

That's funny. We found one. Not sure the exact product, but we do use one. In any event according to Novell in Groupwise 6.5 you can have it filter Junk mail and viruses. Plus when all of those exchange servers got beat up thanks to Code Red, our Groupwise server was fine. Also, for your blackberries, could you not just set up forwarding rules that forward the mail and then the mail back from the blackberry could be sent thru their smtp? I mean if your worried about e-mail security, your probably should not be using a Blackberry anyway.

I agree about Open Source not being mandated though. There are lots of good products out there that deserve attention as well. I am all for using the best tool for the job period. Just like you can't use a hammer for everything, you can't use Open Source for everything either.

Kinda reminds me of this ad: Instant Message to IT

Have you tried any of the following yet? (i am sure you have, but it never hurts to check)

Go check out http://www.jobomagic.com (no this is not spam to some worthless jobsite). It is a huge listing of job websites, just start down the list & setup your profile/agent at each site (then setup your mail filters :P). It is not just a list of US sites, there are UK/HK/CH/etc sites on there, and if you run across other sites that are not listed, submit them. You would not only be helping yourself, you would be helping many others too.

Make sure your coverletter (which is important, most people dont care for an email with the only thing included is a resume as an attatchment) is up to snuff, & start posting it & your resume site by site. You could even go through the local gold/platinum reseller list from Novell.com, maybe even give microsoft's local reseller list a shot, citrix, etc...just email/hand deliver a copy of your coverletter/resume even if they dont have job openings. At least you would already be on their list when they do decide to start looking for someone new.

You may even look into becoming a dba (doing business as, like $10 to start), or LLC. Perhaps find some other unemployed IT people in your area that would compliment your skillsets & start a business together, or subcontract to them. Snag a local non-profit & help them, get them going as your company's demo case with all the latest slickest stuff out there and as a show of what you can do. Given time you could have your own consulting business. www.giftsinkind.orghas a great Novell product donation policy, & www.techsoup.org has some other good stuff too.

Thanks & good luck with the hunt

System V is the basis for all operating systems outside of Redmond

Huh? What rock has this guy been living under?

OS/360, VM/CMS, MVS, Z/OS, OS/400, OS/2(...)

We could make a game out of this...

NetWare
The OS for any computer built before MS incorporated (C64, Apple II, etc.).
Multics
Amoeba (ok, it isn't much more than a research project...)
PalmOS
Symbian/EPOC

Anymore? C'Mon, I know there's gotta be a huge list!

If Novell can bring a good, stable NDS implementation to Linux then Linux will gain a LOT in the Enterprise.


That happened three years ago. They've also ported it to Windows, Solaris, and AIX.

Get your download on and try it out.

If Novell can bring a good, stable NDS implementation to Linux then Linux will gain a LOT in the Enterprise.


That happened three years ago. They've also ported it to Windows, Solaris, and AIX.

Get your download on and try it out.

B. Using the hottest buzzword in computers today "Linux" - The platform Novell probably the most worried about losing it's customers to.

I don't know if this is necessarily the case. I've been working on developing a solution for a problem that I've been having - distributed logons - with Linux, and have so far come away delightfully unimpressed.

First, we installed Samba, and got that working as a PDC with our W2K machines. Then, we got it working together with roaming profiles. Ok, fine, but then we went to Samba-TNG so we could use an LDAP directory backend. That'd be great, if there were any decent LDAP HOWTOs for Linux. The ones that there are are horrid, and you have to assemble them all in your head to make any sense of it. Once that was done (with the poor LDAP browsers available), we tried to move other services to it, which is a nightmare. Most of the LDAP-authenticating software we have (proftpd-ldap, etc.) just plain breaks, or doesn't work, or 'works' but doesn't (fails silently), or a myriad of other things. Figuring out how to do any of this stuff in the first place was a nightmare, and then trying to figure out what's wrong without having to source-dive is just a waste of my time. Once I finally got PAM working with LDAP, we have the problem of it asks for passwords twice, instead of automatically falling back. PITA. Then, if we wanted other systems to authenticate, we'd have a whole new bag of worms.

People say Novell is a bitch to configure. They say it's hard to learn. Yeah, but you know what? There's ways to learn. There's documentation. There's manuals. There's courses. There's books. When it comes down to it, there's $150/hr freelance CNEs or the consultants that installed your network in the first place. When customers move to Linux and try to do anything that's great about Linux (i.e. assembling their own solution) they quickly find that it may be cheaper, and it may give you more of a sense of satisfaction, but when you have to manage an entire corporate network, you don't have time to migrate everyone to Linux just because 'it's cheaper'. It's not. For the price of my time as a Linux admin, setting all this up, testing it, re-testing it, making damn sure it's not going to blow up in my face, I would suggest a Novell solution, because I know that if I set it up properly, it's going to freaking work, and if it doesn't, I don't have to worry about my boss bringing the hounds of hell down on me, because there's a support contract.

Linux is only a challenger in small business, and Novell's offering their small business starter pack for free (contact your local CNS for details). Larger business will go for solutions that they don't have to worry about. You pay for some staff to get their certification, keep them up to date, and that's it. With Linux, you only have their word that they know what they're doing, and when things explode or you have to find someone else, they have to figure out what's going on, and when the system's a melange of PHP sites calling perl scripts to manage LDAP databases of user data for the patched daemons running on colocated servers, better men than I have threw in the towel on the first day. Businesses are finding this important point out: anyone can learn 'Linux' - you can train a kitten to play with the keyboard and administer a Linux system - but when it comes down to the crunch and you need to build your own system, unless you keep excellent, centralized, readable, updated documentation, you can't just hire some Linux admin off the street - you need the guy that worked there before, and hopefully he left on good terms.

Microsoft and Novell are not out there because they're corporate whores. They're not popular because they lock people in. They're not even popular because managers have heard of them. They're popular because if I'm Novell certified in the relevant products, I can walk into any Novell business and sit down and administer the network. It's consistant. It's coherant. It's easier to just get to work, because if you know it you know it. Until Linux gets this, it won't be popular.

--Dan

Some suggestions for the short term: First, one should make it a point to physically secure the server and limit access to the hardware. Second, you can lock the console, which will require the admin username and password to unlock it (configure the console screensaver). Three, you don't use rconsole or RconJ. You use AdRem's Remote Console (and remove access to the built-ins), which does use user-level authentication (and encryption). And if all of that doesn't float your boat, you can run Bash on it.

Novell Forge, Novell's Source Forge like thing. Some propoganda from Novells site.

Novell Forge, Novell's Source Forge like thing. Some propoganda from Novells site.

Suggest them
something from IBM Linux solutions. Why not?
Or something from
Novell that works from Linux platform

The technology the poster is referring to is called "Elevator Seeking" and was originally included in early versions of Novell Netware (and is still in current versions, as it really does improve access time.) Here's Novell's official definition.

Elevator seeks reduce the average wait time for data to be returned and therefore increase performance. But as you already realized it has to understand the underlying geometry of the drive.

"Am I reading their prices [novell.com] right? $2 per user?? I might just reinstall Redhat on a spare box to test this out. Too bad they don't have a FreeBSD version."

It's better than that: 1) The first 250,000 licenses are free http://www.novell.com/products/edirectory/promo.ht ml
2) Many current Novell products (like iChain, & some products from other vendors) come with eDirectory licenses
3) Any significant purchase over the 250K mark is going to qualify for some type of volume purchase and thus cost less than $2/user.

"it offers very high performance, massive scalability, replication, partitioning, cross platform support and more."

Am I reading their prices right? $2 per user?? I might just reinstall Redhat on a spare box to test this out. Too bad they don't have a FreeBSD version.

In fact, Novell came up with the name earlier than Nokia did.

Novell Ngage

Sounds a lot like iFolder from Novell.
The client or "agent" normally runs on win32, but can also be run as a java plugin from a web browser.
iFolder

This is 100% the wrong way to go about things, bud. What you want to do is use something like Microsoft Systems Management Server, Veritas WinInstall, or Novell ZenWorks SnAPPShot to monitor the install on your install test-bed PC (you DO have one, don't you?), make all those oodles of changes you want to, then redistribute it identically to your clients. If you don't have these, I would buy one of the packages -- the money you spend will save you $$$ in man-hours trying to come up with a hackneyed, crappy homebrew solution in the long run. Once you start using these distribution apps, they will become your next best friend.

A company I worked for in the mid-nineties wrote an ODMA integration module for AutoCAD which required that the user complete the title block of the drawing before they could save the file. The pertinent attributes were extracted from the drawing and passed on to the document management system (DMS).

With most DMSs, the file to be saved is full-text indexed as well (often this work is done as a background task during slower periods) so that you can locate a document with fuzzy searches, even if you do not no what attributes were used to store it.

Novell Groupwise includes an ODMA compliant DMS which also includes viewer modules for many common file formats, and with the web interface can allow a user on the road to search an entire library, view the results via a web browser, and download or checkout the desired documents.

It would be wonderful if someone could come up with a standards based way to provide similar functionality in a Free Software based DMS. I know of a few companies who cannot switch away from Windows/Novell because of the need for a robust DMS, and the clients to integrate with it. This is especially important in fields like Medicine and Legal, where large numbers of documents are generated on a regular basis.

A company I worked for in the mid-nineties wrote an ODMA integration module for AutoCAD which required that the user complete the title block of the drawing before they could save the file. The pertinent attributes were extracted from the drawing and passed on to the document management system (DMS).

With most DMSs, the file to be saved is full-text indexed as well (often this work is done as a background task during slower periods) so that you can locate a document with fuzzy searches, even if you do not no what attributes were used to store it.

Novell Groupwise includes an ODMA compliant DMS which also includes viewer modules for many common file formats, and with the web interface can allow a user on the road to search an entire library, view the results via a web browser, and download or checkout the desired documents.

It would be wonderful if someone could come up with a standards based way to provide similar functionality in a Free Software based DMS. I know of a few companies who cannot switch away from Windows/Novell because of the need for a robust DMS, and the clients to integrate with it. This is especially important in fields like Medicine and Legal, where large numbers of documents are generated on a regular basis.

I'm using version 5.5, it could be that 6.0 cleaned up the web interface quite a bit. Even in 5.5, it doesn't suck as bad as Exchange's web UI, but it still pales in comparison to the Groupwise client.

Wait a minute... you just badmouthed the GroupWise web-UI, because you were comparing it to the native client? Don't you think that's just a bit unfair? I have been using Outlook WebAccess for a long time, and I am quite familiar with GroupWise, too. I compare web-GUI to web-GUI and am convinced that Outlook WebAccess sux - in comparison with GroupWise. Yes, I agree that it's still far from what the native client can do, but give it some credit.

OK, now to the point of server-side support: This link is pretty informative, and tells you that you can use NetWare 5 or 6 or Windows NT/Windows 2000 (emphasys mine).

I hope I have dispelled at least a little bit of missunderstanding.

cheers!

Yeah, you can change the permissions on NT too, but then you run the risk that nothing will work.

This, along with all the other nifty cool features of ZENWorks definatly are a sanity saver, on any network where there are more then 20 Windows computers.

novell is looking for an experienced software engineer.

Dammit! People need to stop ignoring Novell.

Building a Poor Man's SCSI-Based Cluster Hardware System

There's much more information buried on their site, of course it applies to NetWare, but just because you don't have a Linux answer, doesn't mean it doesn't exist at all.

No network access? Not built in, perhaps, but there are plenty of ways to use MSDOS clients in network environments. Check out PCTCP. Or Netware (they *still* offer a DOS client).

• 
  
• PHP is not web-only. I do large amounts of system administration and database manipulation in PHP. Its string handling abilities are concise, consistent, and powerful.
  
• PHP is the most frequently installed Apache module. (As of a few months back, I couldn't locate current statistics)
  
• PHP has bindings for GTK. That's right. You can write GUI applications using PHP if you like.
  
• Using the Zend Optimizer, you can compile PHP scripts to binary code that can be distributed without revealing your sources.
  
• PHP will be bundled with Netware.
  
• A full featured Webserver has been written in PHP. Yes, the webserver itself. Features include HTTP/1.1, CGI support, name-based virtual hosts, server side includes, authentication, gzip content encoding support, Apache combined format and MySQL logging. Look out, Apache!
  

No actually he's not lying. Though he only gave half the story - 5.8 is unsupported developer code, and it is very unstable, in addition, NetWare ships with perl version 5.003_07 - which was originaly release by the perl folks back in 1996...

They have lots of marketing materials (some funny, some anti-MS, some pretty boring) on their Promotions & Events Videos page.

They have lots of marketing materials (some funny, some anti-MS, some pretty boring) on their Promotions & Events Videos page.

Dont forget the 250,000 free eDir licenses for any developer or OEM who wants. That counts into Novell's half billion licenses as well.

Hmm, 100 developers/OEMs makes 25,000,000 eDir licenses. 1,000 makes a quarter billion...

You only need a DOS partition the size of RAM if you want to do a core dump of memory for diagnostic purposes.

True, and considering the min hardware requirements are 256MB of RAM - you understand where I got my measurement. The fact is though, you cannot resize fat16 or netware NSS based partitions easily, and I've had more than one case where I've had to send a core dump to Novell. So hence, the extra and otherwise wasted space is necessary to setup at the time the server is setup.

You can unload DOS from memory using "secure console"

Uhh, no you cant, and "remove dos" was removed from the OS in NetWare 5.x and newer. In addition, when DOS is removed you cannot backup the files on the C: drive anymore, and the abend.log file does not get updated when an abend occurs. Where have you been these last 4 years?

Either way though - using Linux, Solaris, xBSD, SCO, Win32, and just about any real enterprise class OS - I can use the partitions that already exist for other production related tasks - meaning the free space can be made as needed, and not reserved and otherwise wasted the rest of the time.

You only need a DOS partition the size of RAM if you want to do a core dump of memory for diagnostic purposes.

True, and considering the min hardware requirements are 256MB of RAM - you understand where I got my measurement. The fact is though, you cannot resize fat16 or netware NSS based partitions easily, and I've had more than one case where I've had to send a core dump to Novell. So hence, the extra and otherwise wasted space is necessary to setup at the time the server is setup.

You can unload DOS from memory using "secure console"

Uhh, no you cant, and "remove dos" was removed from the OS in NetWare 5.x and newer. In addition, when DOS is removed you cannot backup the files on the C: drive anymore, and the abend.log file does not get updated when an abend occurs. Where have you been these last 4 years?

Either way though - using Linux, Solaris, xBSD, SCO, Win32, and just about any real enterprise class OS - I can use the partitions that already exist for other production related tasks - meaning the free space can be made as needed, and not reserved and otherwise wasted the rest of the time.

You only need a DOS partition the size of RAM if you want to do a core dump of memory for diagnostic purposes.

True, and considering the min hardware requirements are 256MB of RAM - you understand where I got my measurement. The fact is though, you cannot resize fat16 or netware NSS based partitions easily, and I've had more than one case where I've had to send a core dump to Novell. So hence, the extra and otherwise wasted space is necessary to setup at the time the server is setup.

You can unload DOS from memory using "secure console"

Uhh, no you cant, and "remove dos" was removed from the OS in NetWare 5.x and newer. In addition, when DOS is removed you cannot backup the files on the C: drive anymore, and the abend.log file does not get updated when an abend occurs. Where have you been these last 4 years?

Either way though - using Linux, Solaris, xBSD, SCO, Win32, and just about any real enterprise class OS - I can use the partitions that already exist for other production related tasks - meaning the free space can be made as needed, and not reserved and otherwise wasted the rest of the time.

Over half a billion? No, under half a billion, more closer to 420 Million accounts. Are you an accountant with Enron?

Either way, that's not NetWare usage, thats eDirectory usage. NetWare is a network operating system, eDirectory is a x500 based directory service (kinda like LDAP). The eDirectory licenses include such users as the 150,000+ users on Novell's free email service (www.myrealbox.com), and the millions of users using CNN online edition.

As much as I used to agree with those who sound the "better product" drum, as a former Novell sysadmin (primary NDS admin for a state university and developer of a YES approved NLM), Novell has lost it. They have too much development in Bangalore (yes, I have participated in a conference call with Bangalore engineers, and yes, they did speak English well, but didn't quite get some concepts on failover I was trying to explain as required) and too much turnover among developer staff. Couple that with a core kernel that's too small to extend (flaws in the kernel prevented effective multi-CPU work are documented on their developer site -- look for NKS) and you have a lean, mean server OS that rocks on a 486, but looks as out of place today as big hair and belts over large sweaters.

Here is Novell's press release on the matter. (man their new web site sucks) It appears that earlier reports of PostgreSQL were inaccurate.

Now, what the press release doesn't say is if Novell plans to remove Pervasive/BTrieve from Netware. Netware has always been deeply steeped in Btrieve (an abomination, in my opinion). Indeed Netware 3 through 6 even use BTrieve for the TCP/IP stack. I can't imagine why but, they do.

I think the solution on all your unix-style OSes is going to be dependent on using PAM-enabled versions of all your network apps, e.g. login. PAM can then be configured to authenticate against an LDAP server. If you want full configurability, e.g. update central db from the "client", you're probably going to need something like Novell Account Management (NAMS) which is based on eDirectory and is explicitly designed for just this situation; I think eDirectory itself is free but NAMS costs $18/user (you may qualify for a discount, though). You can also install an LDAP server on your Win2000 box that pulls authentication info from the local SAM/AD but I know if it will allows updates.

I think the solution on all your unix-style OSes is going to be dependent on using PAM-enabled versions of all your network apps, e.g. login. PAM can then be configured to authenticate against an LDAP server. If you want full configurability, e.g. update central db from the "client", you're probably going to need something like Novell Account Management (NAMS) which is based on eDirectory and is explicitly designed for just this situation; I think eDirectory itself is free but NAMS costs $18/user (you may qualify for a discount, though). You can also install an LDAP server on your Win2000 box that pulls authentication info from the local SAM/AD but I know if it will allows updates.

velkro said:
> Works good here. Novell's eDirectory has a pwdsyunc module available to sync info/passwords with Active Directory too.

Novell has got more than just one product that can fit this bill - DirXML can synchronize passwords (along with IDs, groups, etc) between eDirectory and NT domains or Active Directory with the Password Sync module (all three pieces now come free with Zen for Desktops 4, BTW), Novell Account Management can synchronize to Mainframe and Unix platforms as well as Windows, not to mention the whole single-signon/Secure Login family of products.

The difference between the various products is partially focus (identity management versus password synch), and partially the choice of authoritative sources (DirXML is VERY flexible).

velkro said:
> Works good here. Novell's eDirectory has a pwdsyunc module available to sync info/passwords with Active Directory too.

Novell has got more than just one product that can fit this bill - DirXML can synchronize passwords (along with IDs, groups, etc) between eDirectory and NT domains or Active Directory with the Password Sync module (all three pieces now come free with Zen for Desktops 4, BTW), Novell Account Management can synchronize to Mainframe and Unix platforms as well as Windows, not to mention the whole single-signon/Secure Login family of products.

The difference between the various products is partially focus (identity management versus password synch), and partially the choice of authoritative sources (DirXML is VERY flexible).

velkro said:
> Works good here. Novell's eDirectory has a pwdsyunc module available to sync info/passwords with Active Directory too.

Novell has got more than just one product that can fit this bill - DirXML can synchronize passwords (along with IDs, groups, etc) between eDirectory and NT domains or Active Directory with the Password Sync module (all three pieces now come free with Zen for Desktops 4, BTW), Novell Account Management can synchronize to Mainframe and Unix platforms as well as Windows, not to mention the whole single-signon/Secure Login family of products.

The difference between the various products is partially focus (identity management versus password synch), and partially the choice of authoritative sources (DirXML is VERY flexible).

Your info is out-of-date. The latest Zenworks for Servers, version 3.0, has full policy and distribution services support on Linux - you can distribute and install RPMs, for instance. Read the latest docs - Novell posts them for download at http://www.novell.com/documentation/lg/zfsi/index. html.
The supported platforms are Solaris 8 and Linux kernel 2.4.x (tested on RedHat 7.1/7.2, but others should work).

Policy and Distribution services provides: (from the docs
* Control the versions of software installed on servers throughout the network
* Define and enforce a standard configuration on any given set of servers
* Control the behavior of servers in given situations, such as downing a server, backing up volumes, managing thresholds exceeded, and so on

It is still true, as far as I can see, that the Zen for Servers Management & Monitoring services, along with Inventory & Remote Control, do not extend natively to the Solaris or Linux platforms. Maybe there will be full support in the next version. In the meanwhile, SNMP management should still be available from a ZfS management console, and Remote Control can be handled through Telnet/SSH, VNC, etc.

Utilities like Snapshot exist for Linux in many forms already - think Tripwire & its relatives.

Your info is out-of-date. The latest Zenworks for Servers, version 3.0, has full policy and distribution services support on Linux - you can distribute and install RPMs, for instance. Read the latest docs - Novell posts them for download at http://www.novell.com/documentation/lg/zfsi/index. html.
The supported platforms are Solaris 8 and Linux kernel 2.4.x (tested on RedHat 7.1/7.2, but others should work).

Policy and Distribution services provides: (from the docs
* Control the versions of software installed on servers throughout the network
* Define and enforce a standard configuration on any given set of servers
* Control the behavior of servers in given situations, such as downing a server, backing up volumes, managing thresholds exceeded, and so on

It is still true, as far as I can see, that the Zen for Servers Management & Monitoring services, along with Inventory & Remote Control, do not extend natively to the Solaris or Linux platforms. Maybe there will be full support in the next version. In the meanwhile, SNMP management should still be available from a ZfS management console, and Remote Control can be handled through Telnet/SSH, VNC, etc.

Utilities like Snapshot exist for Linux in many forms already - think Tripwire & its relatives.

Here

Fast, scalable, reliable, full featured RDBMS - just it costs a few $$ - but for that you get huge huge features.

I don't quite know what they're up to. Just over a year ago they were showing off their Netdevice software (basic premise - take a server, put in the CD, 20 mins later you've got a NAS that'll work with anything). It looked great - would sit happily in Windows, Novell, Linux, Unix networks, easy to admin from a web browser or via ZEN for Servers, proper NDS/edir support, used the very impressive NSS filesystem, and were promising Mac and WebDAV support in the next release. Basically a stripped-down Netware with some modification for those duties.

Unfortunately it seems to be sitting in the "obsolete" section of the pricelist with no news about future versions. Shame, because it looked like a really promising idea.