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Novell to support Linux with NDS
One of our readers writes "Check out the press release that says that Novell is porting NDS to Linux. This could mean that Linux will stand a good chance to penetrate the data center--just another step toward world domination. Plus NDS v8 can support a billion directory entries. " Novell is saying it will be availible by calender year 99-keep our fingers crossed.
This may be good for those that wants to get Linux into NDS networks, but the community should concentrate on creating a open and free directory service for itself built on open and nonproperity standards. Support Linux Dierctory Project and OpenLDAP: A System Administrator's Vie w of LDAP Linux Directory Services The OpenLDAP Project
The word "available" when issued from Novell usually means it will be made available as "public beta." An actual shipping product probably won't be available until Spring of 2000. This will be at least half a year after NDS v8 for Solaris will have already been a shipping product.
... will dsrepair be ported to Linux too?
Btw, Netware for *nix and NDS for *nix differ in the services they are intended to provide. While Netware for Linux emulates Netware file & print services. NDS for *nix allows NDS authentication to *nix. There is PAM modules already available to do this however. One PAM module will authenticate against an Novell server or as an alternatie the RADIUS PAM module can autheticates against a Novell radius NLM (which authenticates against NDS). The only advantage is being able to have a local replica to authenicate against. This probably is not much of a performance win. In the end, places that need NDS for *nix will probably use one of the PAM or Apache module solutions already available and by the time this is actually *shipping* it may be a product looking for a market instead of the other way around.
Btw, where is the NDS for AIX that would result from the Novell/IBM partnership announced some TWO YEARS ago? Novell has stated for a long time that since NDS is written in C "it is multi-platform" and to expect it "everyplace" really soon. The fact that Novell marketing has thrown around hot-words ("C", "Portable", "multi-platform", "single solution") for such a LONG time doesn't help their reputation much nor the hot-words they are throwing around now. I'm not convinced that just because NDS 8 for Solaris is scheduled to ship at the same time as NDS 8 for NT that they really are "dedicated" (another Novell marketting hot-word) to "*nix." Solaris is far from being "everywhere." And the fact that Novell has claimed "portablity" while leaving *nix ports at DS v6 when DS v7 is out leads me to believe that idiots who buy into replicating to *nix will find themselves in a mess when NDS v9 comes out and it is recommended to upgrade ALL replicas.
Oh, btw... some other questions for your Novell hot-word market rep to answer...
Is ConsoleOne PureJava? Can it run on Linux today? Can it run on Linux today?
What NWadmin plug-in funcationality does ConsoleOne have today? GroupWise? ManageWise? BoarderManager? ZenWorks?
What administration of the Linux box can be done from ConsoleOne? How will it compare with LinuxConf? How will it compare with COAS? Why is ConsoleOne easier/perferable to the web interface access to LinuxConf or COAS?
How much network traffic does DS replication & authentication produce compared to NIS authentication or RADIUS authentication?
And how does a billion user objects translate into 16 bit UIDs?
"Well Our Novell servers Do use a DOS base, and as far as I know, Dos is required for Novell 3.1 and 4.11. Given you almost never see the Dos base once you get a Novell server"
Novell uses DOS (typically MS-DOS, although I understand DR-DOS is possible) as a boot loader. After SERVER.EXE loads, you can run the REMOVE DOS command and remove all traces of DOS from memory. At that point you are running pure Netware, not DOS. Netware is it's own operating system, with its own API's, filesystems, and so on.
The use of DOS as a boot loader historically has had many advantages:
A) Most low end Intel boxes do not have a monitor running at the firmware level as do higher end Unix machines (e.g. Sun). This was particularly true back in the 1980-1985 time period when Novell brought the concept of networking to the DOS-tel world. Use of DOS as a boot loader provides an emergency startup capability if the box truely falls over.
B) Simple to install and set up the boot sequence using DOS tools (this applies more to the 3.11 days as most of this is automated today). Plus everyone has a set of MS-DOS 5.0 disks around somewhere.
C) File and directory manipulation tools available under MS-DOS are crude, but simple and usable for the few tasks that need (or needed, as again this is mostly gone with NW 4.x/5) to be done with them.
D) You are always able to boot a server back to DOS and run minimal utilities (de-upgrade a driver, run a virus scanner, etc.).
Again, there is no absolute reason that DOS has to be used, as once Netware is running all traces of the boot loader are gone. Anything could have been used: CP/M-86, p-System, Forth, you name it. For historical reasons DOS was chosen, but don't let that fool you into thinking that DOS runs under Netware in the same manner as it runs under Windows 95. It doesn't.
sPh
I am very excited to see this product... Has any one used the port for Solaris. It was released some time ago, but only for the Sparc platform, because it uses PAM. I have been told that the proof of concept was developed on linux, so I am slightly dismayed that it hasn't been released by now... since Novell's site said by Q2!
Outside of large scale user management, which by no means is trivial, what can NDS offer for *NIX? Novell's idea of authentication is very different from the traditional idea.... authenticate once and then you've got access to whatever you have rights to. I am interested in what functionality NDS can provide in an environment which traditionally has required authentication for each and every connection.... The prospect of kicking off multiple shells/ftp connections/etc and only having to authenticate once would be a interesting thing to implement...
I'm on the client side! I have no control over what the server does.
Note that that's true even if the server is running Unix. If a site doesn't want to support your Linux client, they won't. Besides, any site running a 'legacy' mail system like MS Mail, probably has worse troubles. (Although, even MS Mail had a SMTP gateway.)
At the same time I feel your pain. One reason Macintoshes were purged from corporations in the early 90s, a big reason was because the f*ing Novell admins were too clueless/afraid to set up the Macintosh services. Your information that there isn't a good NetWare client for Unix only serves to reinforce the impression that Novell is still living in the golden era when they had 80% of the market with DOS clients.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
This comment appears to have been unfairly moderated. Is someone trying to crush the truth that Client32 is a pain in the ass?
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Well the more support the better.
Has anyone used Novell for Unix? I use and administer Novell 4.11 at work (servers, firewalls, and VPN's, OH My), and while user management and related issues are good, other things (client 32, ipx/ip, email, etc...) are really unstable (except novell servers which tend to be very stable minus a abend here and there).
Does NDS mix well with *nix permisions and user settings? How is the Admin interface? I would Love to move off of novell for everything but NDS.
This is certainly going to make it easier for companies to adopt Linux. One hurdle has certainly been the inability to have simple management of Linux machines. All of the money that you save in software and licensing are more than offset by the fact that you need to bring in a separate staff to manage the boxes.
If you can integrate the system into existing management tools, however, than you can at least make your Linux design on technical merits and not worry about management costs.
Another big step forward. I know a lot of companies who have been waiting a long time for this.