NFS/NIS Recommendations for Windows? 48
Fembot asks: "The Samba team are doing a great job, but I can't help but feel that making Unix machines serve Windows-based protocols is the wrong approach. Back in the days of Windows95 it shipped with an NFS client on the CD which could be installed optionaly. Are there open source (or even just free as in beer) NFS clients for Windows 2000/XP, and is it possible to authenticate users on Windows desktops via NIS?"
Re:In Soviet Russia (Score:1, Offtopic)
I hate to tell you this, but the Canadian guy was asking how to put more memory into his mp3 player, not how to install a hard drive in it. Some stupid people just assumed that's what he asked. He didn't want to buy a new one because he would have to pay a tax to the RIAA terrorists. Sounded like a good question to me.
I don't see why this NFS question is stupid either. Maybe you're one of the regulars from comp.os.linux.*? ;-)
The obligatory joke: In Soviet Russia...you screw Microsoft!
Have a nice day. ;-)
Linux Interaction Kit (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Linux Interaction Kit (Score:1)
(Maybe)
Re:Linux Interaction Kit (Score:2)
Now _that_'s good software!
As long as you include the System Universal Connection Kit with the Central Online Controller Kit.
--DM
mod parent up (Score:1)
Re:mod parent up (Score:1)
Re:Linux Interaction Kit (Score:2)
Yeah. That would be cool. Then they'd get their OEM licences revoked by MS and every Windows user out their would be stuck buying...uh...
Hmm. Now that Compaq is gone, who makes overpriced, crummy computers? I don't think Gateway charges quite enough to qualify...
No (Score:5, Informative)
Your options are to either
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't because no one wants it, or no Free Software
authors are interested, it's because "the Monopoly" (tm:-)
ie. Microsoft doesn't want you to be able to do this, so
they don't openly release the internal interfaces you need to
use to write such a thing.
They're available under NDA (at least the NFS parts) but
the authentication parts are controlled with an iron fist
(I don't think there are any replacement LSA modules that
will allow NT/W2K/XP to use a NIS or NIS+ server as the
sole authentication source). You see, if you could authenticate
to a NIS or NIS+ server then you wouldn't need to buy those
Windows server licenses and the strategy of leveraging a
desktop monopoly into a server one would be in danger...
This is why people are *really interested* in a Samba PDC.
Regards,
Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.
Re:No (Score:2)
Are there any Open Source luminaries that *don't* read Slashdot?
Re:No (Score:3, Funny)
Are there any Open Source luminaries that *don't* read Slashdot?
You mean, besides the Slashdot editors? ;)
Re:No (Score:2)
More encouraging is that these folks CONTRIBUTE to the disussions! It's one thing to read a site like this, but another to lend expertise and foster a more valuable discussion.
Re:No (Score:1, Informative)
For instance, should an administrator wish to use an existing Unix server, and its existing base of users, to authenticate access to Windows 2000 machines there are few options. The methods employed may range from using a Windows 2000 server for authentication and having the administrator maintain identical lists of usernames/ passwords on each server, to using Samba to emulate a Windows NT 4 Server. However, each method has its drawbacks and limitations. Ideally the administrator should be able to setup a standard naming service, such as NIS (Network Information Services) or LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), on ANY type of server and have all clients, regardless of OS revision, access that single repository.
Sorry for the flood but it looks interesting to anybody wanting to do this sort of stuff.
Thanks for Samba too
Don't use NFS, then (Score:5, Informative)
Yup. But if you're willing to use AFS instead of NFS, there's OpenAFS [openafs.org] , an AFS client that's available for Windows, MacOS X, Linux, and just about every platform out there. It's free and open source, plus pretty well designed. IBM pushes and supports it, and MIT and CMU (plus a lot of other places, but it gives you an idea of how much approval it gets from people in the know) both use it for their storage system.
AFS will also buy you a seriously secure system and better performance (thanks to leases and other good design features) than you'll get from CIFS (Windows filesharing). I'm pretty sure that NFS, despite the large number of changes in recent versions, is still outperformed by AFS.
It can be more a bear to set up, since you'll probably want to also set up a dedicated KDC, but at least you're doing things the Right Way.
Coda is supposed to be the successor to AFS, but I really haven't heard of people using it much, and Intermezzo doesn't have the backing that AFS does.
Oh, yes. AFS can do distributed storage, so it can (magic boss-exciting word approaching) *scale* really well.
Re:Don't use NFS, then (Score:2)
Has anyone tried a different client (arla, maybe?) against an OpenAFS server on FreeBSD? I'd
1. I love Samba, and NFS is a nice standard. But for heterogenous networks the seperate administration required to configure tools that access the same data is a drag.
Re:Don't use NFS, then (Score:2)
Do you already use cache in NFS or SMB? I don't even know if it exists in SMB.
If you don't use caching already, and if its lack doesn't affect the functionality of AFS, no loss in trying.
Re:Don't use NFS, then (Score:1)
Not unless AFS transfers data faster than the network can. I get about 90 Mbits per second through my 100 Mbit network with linux NFS. On to gigabit I guess.
Re:Don't use NFS, then (Score:2)
Most things'll work well when you have them sitting near each other on an unsaturated network link, though.
AFS works more nicely if you've got a heavily utilized or higher latency connection, because it doesn't have to hit the server as much.
Do the smart thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
- A.P.
Because it's not secure (Score:1)
Frankly, so is SMB, but if you have to dance with the devil, make it the devil with 95% market penetration.
Re:Because it's not secure (Score:1)
Dance with the devil that's not based on a written accredited standard, and that's likely to change significantly any time it gets to be too well understood by non-Microsoft developers.
Security considerations (Score:3, Interesting)
FWIW, the Mac OS up through version 9.2 has pretty much the same set of issues. Mac OS X, being Unix-based, has NFS server and client support natively.
--Paul
Re:Security considerations (Score:2)
For example, the local administrator on NT machines is always user -500.
Re:Security considerations (Score:2, Interesting)
The end result is that there isn't a clean mapping between the two domains. And the implementations of NFS for windows that I have seen have been hackish at best and disfunctional at worst.
Using the windows protocols (CIFS or whatever it is being called these days) may be the best option.
Re:Security considerations (Score:3, Interesting)
Might this have changed when they moved to NFSv4? It uses GSSAPI, which presumably means it uses Kerberos principals instead of UIDs to identify users on a client machine.
Re:Security considerations (Score:2)
Re:Security considerations (Score:2, Interesting)
I quietly backed out without doing a thing, but it made me a little nervous. The company in question makes implantable medical devices, and it would have taken me a minute or two longer to make changes to firmware code in development for said.
Re:Security considerations (Score:2)
That had nothing to do with NT, that was just plain poor security on the unix admins' part.
Re:Security considerations (Score:1)
Good reason for this.... (Score:2)
Re:Good reason for this.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Is there a short digest version of what's so bad about NFS on Linux that someone can reiterate?
Re:Good reason for this.... (Score:3, Informative)
1. NFS file-locking is pitiful
2. Stale mounts.
3. Poor host-based security vs. SMB
4. Inferior performance
nfs for win32 [opensource, freeware, commerical] (Score:4, Informative)
nfs is an NFS server for Windows written in Allegro Common Lisp.
[2] War NFS Daemon written by Jarle Aase (freeware)
[3] http://www.labtam-inc.com/
commerical
Re:nfs for win32 [opensource, freeware, commerical (Score:2)
From the guys who brought you War FTPD
Re:nfs for win32 [opensource, freeware, commerical (Score:1)
It also mangled the files/dirs it was supposed to share (from the clients-pov, not physically)..
disclaimer: but this was way back
Take a look at Hummingbird NFS Maestro Solo (Score:1)
These are the same people that make Exceed. - Though instead of Exceed, I bought Xmanager [xmanager.com] by NetSarang (lot less $ and did SSH tunnel, etc)
Good luck on your search.
Unix Services for Windows (Score:1)
Which is harder? (Score:2)
It's not like you can express better ownership/permission semantics than Windows supports anyhow.
If you have to go around installing software it's always a harder sell.
Personally, I'd love to see an ssh-based windows filesystem, though.