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Novell Releasing NDS for Linux 102

Posted by emmett from the mmm-directory-services dept.
Eric Feldman writes, "Novell will finally be showing its NDS product running natively on Linux. Red Hat is listed as a vendor who will be at the Brainshare conference in March, and Caldera was there last year. The article also talks about some open-source license problems Novell has been having, as well as the possibility of some parts of Groupwise being released under Novell's Open Source License. The next version of Groupwise (code named BulletProof) is supposed to be announced at Brainshare also. It will be XML-based and tightly integrated with the directory."
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Novell Releasing NDS for Linux More

Novell Releasing NDS for Linux

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  • I have noticed that the phrase, "open some of the code", is becoming common place in press lately. Obviously this is a key to the future of exceptence of the open source model. I would rather have a bit to work with then nothing.
    --
    Offering Open Source Reward's
    http://www.OpenReward.com

  • Finally... (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 28, 2000 @01:29AM (#1241312)
    With the right marketing and some push Novell could lock down the corporate market on this one... For those of you that have not experienced the ease of admin dealing with a well designed NDS tree you are really missing out.

  • Good news (Score:5)

    by blane.bramble ( 133160 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @01:33AM (#1241313)

    This has got to be good for Linux - NDS could well prove to be a key technology, particularly as by most reports it not only beat MS's offering to market, but also is the better of the two. It also serves Novell well to have NDS on all available platforms - theres little point having a global directory for your organisation if it's specific to only a few systems.

    I don't think the license matters - this is a business product aimed at IT departments, who are quiet happy to pay for serious products - but it should help legitimise the use of Linux for other purposes (why can't we use it as a web server, it's already used for NDS...)

  • NDS on Linux (Score:5)

    by DaveHowe ( 51510 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @01:48AM (#1241315)
    Even with a standard commercial licence, this is a tremendous step forward - NDS, for all it is a damned expensive way of administering a network, is still the best way I have seen to date. It is stable, cross-platform (and single-login enabling) and can manage almost anything (from remote resources to application licence counting to bandwidth allocation from NDS enabled routers).
    However, the company I work for rejected it for NT administration - purely on the pricing structure; for each registered (not concurrent!) user, per server, you had to pay a large NDS licence fee, with obviously the cost of a standard NT user licence on top of that. I would want to see how the new NLS "per user" model is applied to both the Linux and Nt clients - and how much a Server licence for Linux is under this scheme.....
    --
  • I have been using NDS for a while now to intagrate my prof's network, it is great. I am glad to see Linux is getting it. This combined with Samba is all we need to move into the fileserving server space right now.

    Sweet

    Nate Custer
  • How viable is Novell today compared to our Unix options (NIS, NFS, Samba, etc)? Are there any Unix tools for migrating Novell networks to Unix, or to bring them side to side?

    What services can Novell provide me that Unix can't?

    - EraseMe

  • Is this good? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yet another closed app, is this good? Why not donate code to OpenLDAP to make it compatible with NDS?
  • What Novell is now releasing NDS, is a service that Unix doesn't have. It allows single point of logon, and for large complex networks to be referenced, organized, and managed with a lot more ease than before. Beyond that, they have one of the better networking clients for Win32, beyond that they can't offer much that is not already out there.

    Best regards,

    Nate Custer

  • Re:Common place in press lately (Score:3)

    by DaveHowe ( 51510 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @02:19AM (#1241322)
    I have noticed that the phrase, "open some of the code", is becoming common place in press lately. Obviously this is a key to the future of exceptence of the open source model. I would rather have a bit to work with then nothing.
    I am going to reserve judgement on this one until I see both the code and the licence; Novell have a past history of being as restrictive as they think they can get away with where licencing is concerned; The last thing I imagine anyone would want is for Novell to release this under any of the following:
    • Such a restrictive licence that you are prevented from using the OSS "netware server" software for linux in conjunction with it
    • giving Novell the right to run the current OSS code as closed-source "official" novell products for other unix platforms (basically, doing all of Novell's beta testing and bugfixing for them on Linux before they do the simple port to big "commerical" *nix systems.
    • simply re-closing the source at a later point when all the major bugs are fixed, so that they can charge for development tools again.
      On the other hand, they HAVE started posting to their website the dev tools that used to be one of their more expensive cashcows, so they *may* be gaining Clue due to MS's competition - we will have to wait and see.

    --
  • NDS is much more viable then NIS. I couldn't imagine building a NIS directory to hold 80,000 user accounts across the entire campus, but we're doing it with NDS.

    Don't confuse NDS with NetWare. NetWare is the server Novell sells, it is an excellent file/print /NDS engine server. They are finally getting its web engines close to snuff and Apache 2 should run on it (1.x is in experimental release).

    I've managed many networks, NT, Samba on ??IX, NetWare. I prefer NetWare for many reasons for file/print, but I prefer ??IX for web/internet (DHCP) etc.

    I found the limits on the internal user database and scalability issues to limit the usefullness of Samba in the enterprise. It is fine for the workgroup, but again, 80,000 student accounts on Samba makes my head hurt.

    It is kind of an apples to oranges thing when it comes to UNIX and NetWare comparisons.

    NDS, however, is where it is at. For directory services and management, it cannot be beat. NIS filled the void, but it really shows its age.
  • If nothing else, I doubt that M$oft will be handing out Active Directory for Linux anytime soon - and NDS is both better and cross-platform supported.
    --
  • In http://www.tuxedo.org/~ esr/fetchmail/fetchmail-FAQ.html [tuxedo.org], ESR (the "Cathedral and Bazaar" guy [tuxedo.org]) writes:

    S13. How can I use fetchmail with Novell GroupWise?

    The Novell GroupWise IMAP server would be better named GroupFoolish; it is (according to the designer of IMAP) unusably broken. Among other things, it doesn't include a required content length in its BODY[TEXT] response. Fetchmail works around this problem, but we strongly recommend voting with your dollars for a server that isn't brain-dead. If you stick with code as shoddy as GroupWise seems to be, you will probably pay for it with other problems.

    Do we need Groupwise on linux ??

  • #linux: 0
    we will have w2k directory one day... which the ms rep said was better than novell's (embed grain salt) but novell and linux? should be interesting.
    I suspect that Linux will be a foothold into NDS for commercial-unix - once LinuxNDS proves stable and reliable, it will be ported to HPUX and sun.....
    --
  • NDS for Solaris has been a product for a while.

    Sun support is old news. :-)

    Mike
  • Much though I hate to be Devil's Advocate here:
    1. Enterprise Level Directory
      NDS is provably scalable to millions of users on thousands of servers, all centrally managed.
    2. Remote Gui tool
      an entire NDS directory can be managed from a windoze workstation (and this is being ported to Java so that Xwindows will be a viable platform too)
    3. Cross platform
      NDS can manage your NT, Linux, Workstation and Netware user permissions from one user object, grant printer rights, email accounts, border (internet/wan) routing rights, and a dozen other things (obviously providing these systems are NDS enabled). If you have ever had to set up a new user, or remove a user no longer welcome on your company's premises than you will known what a nightmare this can be to administer quickly.
    I am sure more reasons will be forthcoming :+)
    --

  • I agree. My experience has shown that GroupWise is more trouble than its worth.

    However, Novell's Internet Messaging Server is comming to linux. NIMS is about the coolest NetWare app I've ever seen.

    Have a look at MyRealBox [myrealbox.com] a free webmail/IMAP/POP server ran by Novell using NIMS on NetWare 5. We've been testing it. very slick, and it'll run on Solaris, Linux, and NetWare (load balancing, all platforms at the same time) in the next release or so.

    Sweet!

    Later,
    Mike

  • Re:Finally... (Score:3)

    by DaveHowe ( 51510 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @02:39AM (#1241331)
    With the right marketing and some push Novell could lock down the corporate market on this one...
    More than that - given that NDS has pretty much a consistant user interface, this could easily blur the dividing lines between different server platforms from the viewpoint of Windoze-locked Users - if you logon to a NDS prompt, and get a mapped drive to your home and working directories, email, printers and web access, does it really matter what operating system provides those services?

    For those of you that have not experienced the ease of admin dealing with a well designed NDS tree you are really missing out.
    Not to mention the deep joy of doing it once, and KNOWING it is done *right*, equally applied to all the servers needed and will be backed up for all eternity next time the tapes spool :+)
    --

  • NDS for Solaris has been a product for a while.
    Sun support is old news. :-)
    I know - but I doubt it will be the same code as the Linux one - particularly after the OSS community get their hands on it and start writing bugfixes and utils tied to the NDS directory structure. I suspect all of this will be Novell's exclusive property to port to other *nix platforms, pending seeing the actual licence used of course :+)
    --
  • I'm in two minds about this - Groupwise 4 (a good, usually stable, and easy-to-administer product) was cross-platform with a vengence - it supported most unixes, most intel platform OSs and VMS.
    It was ENTIRELY flatfile-database - so if you could get your client to look at the postoffice, you could connect to and use that postoffice, regardless of platform for either server or client. if you needed to debug, you could manually trace the interchange-flatfiles used for communication between postoffices and/or domains and find the holdups.

    Groupwise 5 added document sharing and document storage to the mix, but in MHO breaking the 4.x model and adding tight ties to NDS was one of the worst things ever to happen to the product. Integration modules, yes - but I think that if novell had had a bigger market share, they would have been up on the same stand as Microsoft over that one.......
    --

  • This product is aimed at large IT departments. While we might want to believe otherwise, there are a lot of people that are still very leery of anything attached to open source, particularly in upper management... ;-). Being GPL'd might actually *hurt* the release, not help. Novell might be better served putting out a commercial version first and then changing over to GPL later...

  • isn't there already a Caldera NDS client? I always wondered what that was like; it seemed like a great idea when it was first introduced all those years ago.

    with NDS running on Linux, there will probably be a whole new crop of servers that once ran something proprietary but get replaced with Linux. It happened with Web servers, mail servers, and, to a certain extent, SMB-based fileservers, now it will happen to directory servers. Even if NDS on Linux isn't a free source download (and I'm not holding my breath for that), it must still be cheaper than buying Netware.

    darren

  • Novell might be better served putting out a commercial version first and then changing over to GPL later...
    I can't see the reasoning here - if they are unwilling to run GPL nds, then they are unwilling to run Linux at all. If they are willing to wear linux with a suitable support contract, than (provided redhat is offering support for this) they will still be willing to accept LinuxNDS under the same terms.
    --
  • isn't there already a Caldera NDS client? I always wondered what that was like; it seemed like a great idea when it was first introduced all those years ago.
    there is, yes - but it approaches it from the other angle; that of a Linux desktop logging into a NDS server (like a Windoze box does) rather than a Linux server supporting NDS logins.
    --
  • with NDS running on Linux, there will probably be a whole new crop of servers that once ran something proprietary but get replaced with Linux. It happened with Web servers, mail servers, and, to a certain extent, SMB-based fileservers, now it will happen to directory servers. Even if NDS on Linux isn't a free source download (and I'm not holding my breath for that), it must still be cheaper than buying Netware.
    Hmm. there is already an IPX/Netware emulator for Linux (similar to the Samba Windoze share emulator) but it is not NDS enabled. I will be interested if the NDS licence allows you to patch this to make an NDS aware MARS server, or even forbids you to run/install a MARS server on the same box.....
    --

  • Here are some relevant references from Novell's site:

    <darren />

  • Great for Linux (Score:5)

    by haggar ( 72771 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @03:21AM (#1241341) Homepage Journal
    I am aware of many customers that would not let Linux in the server room if it wasn't possilbe to manage it centrally with NDS. Why? Do you ever think why are so many MCSEs needed? Because to administer an NT network you need a lot of silly NT admins that will run around silly NT boxes that need to be rebooted or administered.
    NetWare does not need that, hence the little number of CNEs around. A typical CNE will lean back on the chair and happily administer a horrendously huge network composed of NetWare, NT and (since recently) Sun boxes. Thanks to NDS. The companies that are used to keep the administrative expenses low (NOT those having a pure NT network, obviously) didn't want to have to deal with Linux because it's a separate box, unattached to the rest of the NDS tree. Now, Linux has a way into those companies, too.
    And believe me, those NDS-enabled companies are much more willing to work with Linux than the NT-only companies, for the simple reason that the NT-ony companies have IM departements run by morons.

  • I think the main problem here is that Novell's main shrinkwrap product IS NDS - it may be bundled with servers or other software, but when it comes down to it, it is the licences you are paying for (I don't know many organisations that don't have far more netware install cds than they need, but only the licence-key disks they actually use. That's because the CDs are interchangable, and in many cases you are better off using just ONE CD consistantly to avoid revision-changes causing problems during installs to an existing tree). Giving away any more than they have to of their "core" product isn't going to happen. In addition, I am told the majority of their income comes from their training and licencing (CNx programs) and authorised partnerships - paying a substantial fee to gain access to tools and technologies needed to successfully troubleshoot netware installations. If they made too much of their "crown jewels" available, then they would lose much or all of this income.
    --
  • He did not make one single point at all, he just harped about how great microsoft supposedly is. Thats an opinion, not a point.

    I moderated it as flamebait because if he really didn't care or know about Linux, he wouldn't post in this forum and this particular thread in the first place.

  • Just a note, NDS 8 is scalable to 32 billion objects.
  • NT-only companies have IM departments run by morons? Believe me, it is these kind of sweeping generalizations that hurt the Linux community. Every time I want to boot up to my linux partition and really start learning it, I read some comment like this on /. and say "do I really want to become one of THESE guys?" BTW, there are more MCSE's because there are more companies that have NT servers (I'm talking corporate busines world here folks, not University or ISP's) and you can make a lot of money. I can't recall seeing an ad here in OKC that asked for a CNE, although I'm sure there are plenty of companies using Novell (a good product, BTW)
    ---
  • Where can one find an explanation of how NDS fits into the network ? My administration duties so far have never involved more servers than I could count on both hands, so I'm not exactly clear on what NDS and Active directory provide. Somebody could splain ?
  • The only reason I said what Isaid is because it's what I have experienced, and that's for me the truth.
    To have an NT-only network is stupid. I work for over 5 years now with networks. I am a MCNE (Master CNE) and a MCSE, too. Yep, got the pesky MCSE certificate to prove to our customers (when I worked for a systems integrator) that I know that stuff. Funny thing was, there were several MCSEs and some MCPs in my company, and only 2 CNEs, including me. The MCSE people were those who had to drive from time to time, to the NT-only customers. Those networks needed constant maintainance, and usually 2 MCSEs had to go to the site. Usually the NT servers had to be rebooted weekly, if not dayly. The worst thing was when an NT server with NTFS (Microsoft's version of a journaled FS) would crash. Chances are you have lost your data nad the server was FUBR. I was also managing the network (NetWare+NT+Linux.. yep, we had linux already in 1996 in production) in the company. It was interesting to see an engineer doing something around an NT server everytime I would pass by the server room. The NT servers were like babies needing some direct care, while I could remotely manage the NetWare and the Linux (and a Unixware) servers from my office. NDS sure helped me a lot to manage the NetWare servers, and the firewall (BorderManager, managed throgh NDS). At the time I was quitting, NDS for NT was being rolled out. Wonder if it's there now, helpingthe new guy that is replacing me.

    Let me reiterate my point: a pure NT network is a stupid thing. I, however, believe that NT has it's place (flame-shields on) in a corporate network. But guess what? This also might be past tense soon, because Linux is a GREAT application server, and it HAS a lot of applications, databases, Java, webservers, mail anything you want AND NDS! One day NT will be an unwise option.

  • Coming out of a 1 week fight with a damned Novell 3.2 server re-install.... Novell: GIVE UP! I have never seen such a horrible mess known as a server next to NT. and Novell5.0 is bloatware at it's very best! Now here they are trying to jump on the magical Linux cookie.. Let's grab their steeniking code, make samba emulate a novell server, and migrate all novell boxes to Linux. Hell the migration would take 50% less time than it take for 1 novell install. (Granted 3.2 is very old... but it's what most companies are still using!)

    Hey, they wanna write linux software? go ahead. I wont be buying anything with the Novell name on it, and I will be sure to tell everyone I know that Novell is NOT the answer to networking. Linux is though, and over 50% of the internet's servers cant be wrong!

  • Nwadmin + client (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Caldera has had a client for a long time, but it hasn't been NDS aware, IIRC. As a Novell Admin in a mixed network environment I'd be happy with an NDS aware client and a version of nwadmin that runs natively on Linux. I dislike the kludgy solution of having to run VMware (or freemware) to use NWadmin. I've set up a separate windows box, just for NWadmin. I don't even care about being able to manage linux resources in the Directory, I'd be satisfied if I could just run the standard management app natively without having to do a lot of finagling to run either DOS apps or windows apps. This has been a long time coming. I like Novell's stuff. It's fast, reliable, and easy to use (without being limiting). Groupwise is another beast. We are starting to have problems with it. When we installed it, we didn't put into place a policy that would have allowed us to enforce the proper use of an (essentially) e-mail/messaging system. As a result, because there's no way to manage user space usage, we've got people taking up 500+ MB of disk space (in a system of 4-5g users, that adds up to a bunch of gigabytes). I really wish that there was a way to control the amount of space that users have available to them, like you can do with quotas in /[Lin|Un]x/. That would solve a lot of problems for us. Since just about all of our users take advantage of Novell's groupwise client, it's not particularly critical that it be entirely compliant with open standards (at least from the organization's point of view, although I'd be happy if it would). My wish list: Nwadmin, NDS aware client for linux, groupwise quotas (Who cares that it's going to XML, if your servers run out of space)

  • Convergence on X.500? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    From what I understand. NDS is like an LDAP or X.500 directory. The demo of the new W2K that my friend described appeared to treat directories like that also.

    Maybe we should define a standard for administrative services based on X.500 work. Similar to the good work at IETF on PKIX, profiling services by defining recommended messages and protocols. This helps sort out the complexities of the X.5* work. This would allow for open source development, as well as a clear migration path for vendors toward interoperability. We have a good start with the tools we have like openLDAP.

  • BTW, there are more MCSE's because there are more companies that have NT servers

    One big reason there's lotso MS Certified goons is because Microsoft flooded the market with easy tests that could be passed by anyone with college-level study skills. I know a couple MCSEs that got their certificate with only a couple months of dinking around with NT on their home computer (= no understanding of the networking part).

    Unfortunately for the goons, MS is decertifying everyone at the end of the year. I haven't seen the new NT5 material, but would think it to be quite a bit harder, just to salvage whatever little value the MS Engineer program still has.

    Novell, BTW, did the same thing back in the NetWare 3 era. They flooded the market with CNE certs, corporations started requiring a CNE as a hiring checklist item, and the resulting crowd of underskilled but certified Novell engineers really gave the company and the certificate a black eye.
    --
  • I guess we just got lucky. Honestly, we had an NT server that had very little problems. It ran Exchange (for the whole enterprise, not just our company) and SQL server. Now our other NT box ran Citrix/Terminal server, which I tend to categorize as a piece of Sh*t, but it was probably because the guy who admin'ed the first box knew what he was doing, the second guy didn't. I think that makes all the dif in the world. As for the remote, I don't get this one either. Our sysadmin only went down there to change hardware. He could do everything else remotely. It's my opinion that if you're gonna do NT, do all NT. It's well know it doesn't play well with others. Do you understand my point that /. messages about "NT sucking" only turn me off. I have no love for M$, but I don't want to learn Linux only to becoming a blithering asshole.
    ---
  • NDS primarily appeals to the operations side of IT organizations. What's more important is that the product is maintained and supported (by the vendor, or a third party, or just a worldwide group of developers and users). In house development is really unlikely to happen in most cases.

    Source code access is really not a plus or a minus to most of these folks. They just want something that works and makes their lives easier and budgets smaller.
    --
  • Last time I added drives to a 3.2 server, I didn't have to shutdown. Open front, push drive in, DISMOUNT DATA2, LOAD INSTALL, MOUNT DATA2.
  • This will work out very well for IS managers who have surrepticiously installed Linux/*BSD on the Network. Now they will be able to manage all of them from NDS.

    That being said, I openly wonder what level of support NDS for Linux will have for such things as FTPD, or QMail? Will you be able to manage your virtual QMail users from NDS?

    One possibility is to create a new object called a 'symbolic link object' which links to the .conf file, allowing the administrator to modify it directly from NDS.

    Just my Monday pre-work ramblings....

    Jailbrekr

  • Re:NDS on Linux (Score:3)

    by Gleef ( 86 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @05:35AM (#1241362) Homepage
    The company I work for is already paying for NDS. NDS for Linux will make it easier to incorporate Linux boxes into our existing NDS infrastructure.

    As far as whether or not it's worth it, basically you can do everything NDS does with Free LDAP servers. What you're paying for is easy management tools, integration with NetWare, easier deployment, support, and the Novell brand name. I can see how it's worth it to some companies, it certainly runs rings around ActiveDirectory.

    If someone wants a good idea for an Open Source company, take LDAP, make sure you've got good ports on dozens of platforms, good login and management frontends on dozens of platforms, put a snazzy label on it, and sell CD's, Books, Directory Consulting and Support for it. Your goal would be something cheaper than NDS and better than ActiveDirectory, and freeer than both. There's a good niche there.

    ----
  • Im sorry to hear of your troubles with Netware 3.2 Its odd that I have never had that kind of a nightmare, even with flakey hardware......

    Netware 3.2 isnt used by almost everyone. Most companies have migrated for Netware 4.x/5.x by now, with a few companies needing 3.2 for backward compatibility with Bindery based applications.

    Shooting down a NOS based on a horrid experience does not make for a good opinion. I have seen Novell 3.x and 4.x servers with an uptime exceeding 1 year (One server was buried under mounds of paperwork. All it was was a workstation with a NIC and Netware 3.12 installed!).

    Netware 5.x may be larger than other version of netware, but I am glad it is running my File/Print server. It hasnt gone down or crashed yet (4 months).

    Jailbrekr
  • Right on! My employer hasn't seen Linux as a viable solution due to the fact that it won't integrate with the exsisting Novell network. It may finally be possible to have the amazing TCP/IP performance of Linux with the management ease of NDS. I'm excited.
  • You right now have two options for NDS support in Linux, in terms of file/print: the Caldera NDS client (you can download the RPM from Caldera, and the nkfs kernel module and compile it for your kernel, and it may work.) and ncpfs, which is really quite good and very open.


    On the NetWare side, you can run NFS for NetWare, but it isn't the cleanest implementation, and you can also do Unix-style printing as of NetWare 5.0 (set up NDS print queues that point to Unix print queues, and I believe go the other way) and also in 4.11 with add-on products.


    Novell is probably better for Windows desktop management than any other product out there, including Microsoft's. ZEN Works is an amazing piece of software, and with NDS behind it it works very well.


    Of course, what people are saying about NDS is true. Remember, NDS is more than an LDAP provider--the "A" in LDAP is "Access", and although you can do LDAP replication, NDS's strength is that it does replication and consistency better than any other directory product. They've been doing this for 10 years.

  • Re:Good news (Score:3)

    by aqua ( 3874 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @06:48AM (#1241369)

    The likely market for NDS (on Linux or otherwise) coincides with the portion of the market least interested in the open source aspects of Linux. That portion also has a reasonably high personnel/software cost ratio anyway (where the software represents a fairly small fraction of the total cost), so standard commercial licensure wouldn't likely adversely affect the potential market much.

    That said, I'd like to see NDS open sourced; however, recall that Novell is currently in a fairly bitter fight with MS over enterprise directory services, and realize that if there were source to NDS around, MS would almost certainly steal^h^h^h^h^hapropriate its better bits to benefit their own Active Directory, licensure prohibiting or not.

    (I submitted the same article a week ago, dammit)

  • NDS is great for administering your network. WHat it allows you to do is, administer almost any device on your network through one tool. You can administer, printers, users, server, workstations, software, etc..

    I am a Master CNE and have worked with NDS for years, it has come a long way. I swear by it, I couldn't imagine running a large enterprise network without it.

    The downside is that NDS can be very touchy when making major changes, like replacing a server or something. When working with a network that is running NDS you have to always be aware of what can happen to tree if you do this or that. It's not a big deal, just as long as you aware of the problems.

    I wouldn't jump on this NDS for Linux bandwagon yet though. It's too new, let them release a service pack or two before you use it in a production environment. My experience with Novell and Linux support has been very horrible. Some of things they have released to run on Solaris, that I have running on the "unsupported Linux" platform were not written very well. They named html pages with all uppercase letters and references them with lower case letters in their servlet. Just plain sloppy programming if you ask me. They wouldn't even talk to me when I called to ask for help with running their GroupWise WebAccess on Linux. They told me it was not a supported OS. And the gay on the phone kept referring to Linux as a company, like there is one big office building somewhere that "Linux-Where do you want to go tomorrow". I am going off, but Novell pissed me off. NDS is a good product, we will see how good it is on Linux.

  • Certification Numbers (Score:4)

    by _Sprocket_ ( 42527 ) on Monday February 28, 2000 @07:11AM (#1241371)
    Do you ever think why are so many MCSEs needed? Because to administer an NT network you need a lot of silly NT admins that will run around silly NT boxes that need to be rebooted or administered. NetWare does not need that, hence the little number of CNEs around.
    Interesting. By this account, there are only so many CNE available because its an admin's dream job. Apparently, the shrinking install base of Novell and the desire for clueless HR to see the latest alphabet string on a resume plays no part in this.

    My experience is completely different.

    In our environment, Novell is a dinosaur. To its credit, the old install base of Novell servers are performing their jobs admirably. But they're being replaced by NT. And the admins know it. They can't wait to get pulled from the Novell pool and get their MCSE. One admin I talked to was rather bitter about being held in an "unmarketable" position by the company.

    Technical merrit need not apply to this conversation. Certification is as much about marketing as technical issues (be it the base technology or the individuals involved). And true to form, Microsoft has positioned themselves (and their certifications) into a much nicer position than Novell.

    One final comment...

    If the generalizations expressed in this post were slighting Linux, it would have been labled a troll. And to think we feel cheated by other's FUD.

  • (I know nothing about NDS, so, please excuse my ignorance)

    What does it offer the Kerberos5 dosen't? Krb5 gives you the single login, and the ability to control access to, machines, and things based on the Krb5 ticket you hold, and scales to many thounsands of users (~60000 here so far, on a pair of Sparc IPC's).

  • I'd love to see Novell Open Source the thing and let M$ be damned. At a customer's site I recently had to replace a Novell server with an uptime of 840 days with an NT box just because the Corporate MI$ guys wanted all of their sites to standardize on M$oft products. Now I routinely down the server at midnight every 6 weeks. That's better than what I was doing...getting called to come in because the server had froze AGAIN!

    I'm not saying that Novell is better than Linux. Save the holy wars for others (presidential candidates?). But this can only help things, IMNSHO.
  • I am doing the same thing at home with Netware 5, since Cox cable modem service sucks so hard.

    In all fairness I could do the same thing with an NT box, just not as easy.
  • The stability and performance of Netware would be nothing but a gain for Linux. I have seen Netware boxes up and running longer than linux has existed. Simply put there is no more stable OS for the PC Server market than Netware. It's a target that Linux aspires to.
  • That was funny. Some idiot, who probably has trouble spelling "computer" writes a post that a third grader would be ashamed of, and you say it is funny. Slashdot sucks.

    You can ridicule Novell, NDS and Netware all you want, it doesn't change the fact that Linux is not capable of doing what Netware/NDS has been doing for 10 years. The fact that Novell has added Linux to the list of Operating Systems that NDS will support is the best news the Linux community has gotten in the last five years.
  • I've been using myrealbox for awhile now, and its great. NIMS is a schweeet product to compare to other mail only products (SMTP, POP3, IMAP, web mail). Groupwise is actually a groupware product, like Lotus Notes. Microsoft has no compariable product, since Exchange is mail only. Novell's NIMS product scales to handle more accounts on a single box than Exchange can handle with a five server farm....

    I really haven't seen a groupware product for Linux yet, unless Lotus Notes was released and I just missed it.

    Also, keep in mind that putting Groupwise on Linux is a positive move for Groupwise and Novell. If it is a positive move for Linux, you can decide on your own, but I can't see how more industrial strength apps for the OS could possibly hurt it. People have cried to Novell for years for a version of Groupwise that runs as an NT service, Ziff-Davis publications seemed to ask for this everytime they did a product comparision. Would you rather that Novell developed for NT or Linux? I knew you would agree with me, that Linun could be a better groupware server than NT, and be more than it currently is...
  • Pointed out some great things. Novell did flood the market several years ago with CNE's who were not worth the paper the cert was printed on. They are now going through their second decertification process. Good for Novell, good for CNE's who want to continue on with Novell Products. Also, to say that the MCSE requires college level study skills, I'm not sure how to take that. I think a BS degree requires nothing more than sitting still for four years, and as an IT hiring manager, if you have a degree, don't bother sending me your resume, all your skills are useless and you are clueless. If I had a nickle for everytime I heard "that's not what professor X said, and he's brilliant. You should see what he did at the University", where reality ends and dicking around begins.. Tell me again where Linux started to gain momentum. And I have an MCSE, so I know it takes no skill what so ever to pass those tests. Actually using NT is not required to breeze through those tests. I think if you fill a testing room with 20 testing machines, and 20 monkeys, 2-3 will come out with an MCSE. I've worked with two of them, so I have to believe that there is a third out there...
  • 50% of internet servers?! I love how you just pull numbers out of your butt like that. And next week, Linux will have 120% of the internet server market, 98.3% of the corporate database market, 75.3% of the corporate firewall market, and 0% mindshare.

    Hell, those numbers are 100% BS, but the reflect reality about as well as your numbers do.

    chump
  • The only people that I have seen with tremendous amounts of trouble getting Netware up and running, are the people who don't know what they are doing. People who don't want to know.

    And guess what, those people have the same problems with NT and Linux. If you are predisposed to failing, you will. What a sad short career that guy must be having. I have seen Netware servers in Janitors closets that were forgotten about, up for several years. No one forgets their NT server because they can't, they have to revisit them far too much.
  • Wow. 1 week for a server install? What kind of giant flaming jackass are you? We just upgraded from NW4.11 to 5.1, it took less than 1 hour per server. Besides, this is a discussion of NDS. What does NetWare 3.2 have to do with that?
  • novell as a file server seemed good. Ive had limited experience but all the 486 novell boxes ive seen as file servers have uptimes 300+days on hardware that if shutdown would never start up. Pretty impressive considering its heavily used every day by an insurance agent. NT cannot do that it takes some damn near impeccable operating system code to do that. We know NT does not have that......I am and always will be amazed at how well the novell machine chugs along with 10 people hitting it all day. *shrugs* Novell will disappear before to long.. Good thing they are providing on platforms that will be around
  • I'm in two minds about this - Groupwise 4 (a good, usually stable, and easy-to-administer product) was cross-platform with a vengence - it supported most unixes, most intel platform OSs and VMS. It was ENTIRELY flatfile-database - so if you could get your client to look at the postoffice, you could connect to and use that postoffice, regardless of platform for either server or client. if you needed to debug, you could manually trace the interchange-flatfiles used for communication between postoffices and/or domains and find the holdups.

    Except the problem with the direct-access mode in GW4 is that it was direct access. Sending a message (task, mail, etc) caused you to do several direct writes from your client to the server involving key database components. When we ran 4.1 it was a nightmare keeping the database uncorrupted -- clients would FUBAR and then the database would go south, requiring a horrificly slow OFCHECK to get it fixed. Ask yourself this: Would you let hundreds of database clients have direct access to your DB, or do it client/server? I vote client server, which is why GW5 is a superior product to GW4.1 (we don't do the document stuff, Novell's db tools are too weak to trust documents to it). I've been crying for years to see all the usual GW NLMs run on Linux. Netware sucks as an applications platform, and GW would rock on Linux.
  • Clarification -- By "college level study skills", I mean that if you have the mental tenacity to cram for the Foo 101 mulitple choice midterm at State U, you can pass the MS tests with prep material alone (and no experience).

    Obviously, a good portion of the US populace can pass a college freshman multiple choice test without much effort. There's also a good portion who can't -- all those As, Bs, Cs, and None of the Aboves makes their eyes goggle, even though they might really know their admin stuff.

    (This is also the common critique of the SAT and so on -- "test taking skills" often count as much as actually knowing the material.)
    --
  • Caldera released NetWare for Linux a couple (few, whatever) years ago. We got all exicted about it and bought it. It was practically useless, though. It essentially only ran on their distro, and only with NetWare boxen with a specific service pack. It was basically a proof-of-concept release.

    NetWare folks new this day would one day come (an "official" Novell supported release), but they sure took their time on it. What's funny now is that all these Novell guys who spoke ill of how Linux wasn't up to snuff will soon be beating along the install trail to try this new thing out. It's better for Linux than it is for Novell, I think. Lots of NetWare geeks are going to start realizing the benefits of Linux.

    Monty

  • When we ran 4.1 it was a nightmare keeping the database uncorrupted -- clients would FUBAR and then the database would go south, requiring a horrificly slow OFCHECK to get it fixed.
    there was a workaround for that - one of the modes was to set threshhold level for post office forwarding. if you set it to 1, you could make the database read-only for users, and they would dump their messages/updates in the local po-server's in queue for it to process
    --
  • I don't think the caldera client is NDS aware. There's two different things going on... the first is the IPX bit that lets you use a novell server, log in to the server, use its resources. The second is the NDS Tree which allows you to use any resource you have rights to use on the entire LAN (or WAN), which can extend over several servers, or geographical locations.
    The Caldera client [calderasystems.com] is a full NW client - including NDS and bindary logins. you may be confusing it with MARS_NWE [compu-art.de] which emulates a server, but can only manage bindary support (and comes with a login client and an IPX stack for linux)
    --
  • there was a workaround for that - one of the modes was to set threshhold level for post office forwarding. if you set it to 1, you could make the database read-only for users, and they would dump their messages/updates in the local po-server's in queue for it to process

    Ugh, the threshold workaround. We had to do this due to (guess what?) a nasty bug with Client32 2.2 and NW 3.11, and it slowed message processing to a real crawl. I seem to remember it working above the PO level, like maybe at the domain level, though. We've banished all those evil revisions to the archive tapes, thankfully.

    You can still chase message flow in 5.x C/S (or should I say you still have to chase message flow), the WPCSIN and ..OUT directories are still used. We still have a PO go south on us once in a while with a 'broken' message stuck in the queue.

    The document stuff, though, is for the birds. Novell still refuses to open their 'cryptographic' message store to real DB tools, and I can't imagine the lusers whining about wanting corrupted files restored from tape when they're buried in a GW library. HR occasionally wants so-and-so's email from N months ago, and it requires an entire PO reload (often on the order of 9 GB) and the associated BSing around to get them what they're after. Even worse is when it's some lawsuit where they want [N..N+Y] months worth of conversations from users on seperate POs. I spent a solid week doing reloads for HR once...
  • I won't argue with that...
  • NDS is more of a user/resource management system. It lets you organize users, printers, and servers into logical trees in any way your heart desires. You can build complex trees representing the organization the tree is for, and easily manage the users by moving them between locations and having permissions, login scripts, etc change according to their location. It's also available on a number of platforms, such as Windows NT, Netware (of course), and Sun Solaris. If you have a mixed network environment consisting of many different kinds of servers, it can simplify things greatly. Single sign-on is just a side effect of NDS deployment on all servers.
  • At my College we have about 15 fileservers, all running Novell Netware (various version, mostly version four, though). At least once a month, sometimes (although not often) weekly, a server goes down, HARD. Like cycle power/reset button hard.

    That means that on average each server is up for about 8 or 9 months. Not bad really, but I'm sure Linux can do just as good a job with a competent Sysadmin running it.

    I don't know what one should expect from a server OS in reliability (I haven't studied the topic in depth), but I would say Netware stability is good. But as for it surpassing Linux - that is a tough case to prove (IMHO).
  • Unfortunately I've met a number of MCSE's that make the term incompetent seem inadequate. There's obviously something very wrong with the MCSE if people who can barely operate a computer properly can get a certification that says they're capable of planning, building and administering a network. I'm not saying that all MCSEs are this way, however there's a fairly large proportion of them that are.
  • I can completely agree with you on this. Too often a dirty shutdown resulted in a "corrupt and unusable" file system that broke NT in strange and unusual ways. You'd end up with something that worked right 99% of the time any other time would simply "stop" working after an power fault. I have an Exchange server at work that hasn't worked right ever since a circuit breaker blew. This is by far my biggest complaint about NT... There's just too many unfixable problems, things that almost work, etc that can only be fixed by reinstalling (!!). I don't know about you, but on a server, this is simply not acceptable.

    On a workstation, however, I have come to really appreciate NT, as it allows users to run all the Win32 programs they're familiar with, and gives them the desktop they're used to, while I can lock them out of making drastic changes to their workstation, thereby reducing my workload of remastering workstations (a time consuming process that consumes a minimum of 3 hours of my or my assistant's time).

    I really believe you should choose whatever OS suites the task. For file servers, that's almost always Netware. Application servers are usually served best by NT. Internet related tasks are often more suited for an UNIX-like server. Hopefully this NDS announcement will help administrators tie all these solutions into a single framework, as my job as it currently stands requires 3 account creations for every single user in the organization, along with dealing with all the quirks with each of those admin tools. I have to admit that I really like Netware's administration tools -- they collect all the individual items of a user's account into one centralized tool, as well as information about all the servers, printer and volumes, as well as other network related information.

  • A case where MS re-used Novell's GPL'd code would be very interesting though - and I don't think they would be brave enough to do it at the moment (just think of the problems it could cause them with their current case settlement "so Microsoft, it appears you have learned nothing from this case...").

    I agree that the market for NDS on Linux isn't particularly interested in the concepts of open source - or at least those holding the budget strings aren't - but likewise they often are interested in using what makes sense rather than what has the biggest marketing budget. Any directory system is surely only as useful as the hardware and os platforms it supports - it's not good having THE solution to everyone's directory needs if it only runs on one platform. This is an area where an os-neutral company (which Novell seems to be moving towards) has a huge advantage over an os-evangelistic one (I name no names).

  • Not only was the original announcement months ago, they've had the product done for months. In fact, NDS for Solaris was a port of the NDS for Linux code. What's been holding them up has been the entire licensing issue. They want to give it away, but I think they are unsure how to proceed.
  • Ugh, the threshold workaround. We had to do this due to (guess what?) a nasty bug with Client32 2.2 and NW 3.11, and it slowed message processing to a real crawl. I seem to remember it working above the PO level, like maybe at the domain level, though. We've banished all those evil revisions to the archive tapes, thankfully.
    We didn't find it that bad - on a 400-user-max-postoffice system, admittedly. you may have had much bigger POs to deal with - we had a decent working max as each department had it's own PO, and indeed often it's own server - I always suspected it wouldn't scale well, even if the Novell salesdroids were pushing it as the complete enterprise/wan/gan solution...
    --
  • simple fartwad. replace scsi card with what you can buy now, follow netwares 67 easy steps to install the driver, watch the 67 easy steps fail, contact adaptec, hear the tech laugh at the fact that I'm trying to use netware with SCSI devices, follow their 32 easy steps, get SCSI working (barely) now install the NIC card... Geee noone makes 3.2 drivers anymore, start raping computers here to find an old 3com card that will work with netware3.2 follow the 12 easy steps to get the 3c509B driver installed, now try and get the tape backup software installed (ON CD, and 3.2 dont support CDROMS) to the server now restore... gee the bindery didn't restore.... recreate it by hand..

    I presonally will cheer when I can throw all netware crap out the window. I will actually BURN the manuals and media in the parking lot.

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