Re: Novell vs Linux

From: Dave Uhring (daveuhring_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 08/18/04 

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 22:47:51 -0500

On Tue, 17 Aug 2004 22:27:07 -0500, Supervisor wrote:

> Yes, eDirectory is available now, but it is still kind of raw. It is real
> picky about what it is installed over. Interestingly enough, we got it
> installed (Installed - not working yet since the pre-release manuals we
> have are a joke) on RH Enterprise but haven't made it run on Suse yet -
> way, way too many parameters on install for which there is no answer and
> for which most Novell contacts don't even know what the question is.
> However, that utility will ripen as time goes on.

The installation instructions are fairly detailed and may have been
updated since you last looked at them.

> Plus, a person used to free Linux software needs to hang onto his/her
> panties when they ask what Novell stuff costs.

No kidding!!

OTOH for your enterprise deployment the cost may well be negligible for
moving from Netware to SuSE. Not that there is anything wrong with
Netware; it is a very stable NOS.

> But, back to my main question. Assume that Novell had never made the jump
> to Linux, just what DOES the admin of a large domain use? There has to
> be some way to cluster servers together for admin purposes. Using my
> original example, some outfit like Google can't possibly maintain a
> network of that size server by server.

Google probably has very few user accounts and something like NIS or
OpenLDAP would easily suffice.

> I found a utility called LDAP which seems to have some of the
> characteristics of what I am asking, but so far the info sidesteps the
> admin question and talks about security mostly.

NDS, like Sun's IPlanet Directory Server, is an implementation of LDAP.
See http://www.openldap.org/. There is a good deployment and
administration guide.

> The purpose of all this is that we have started up a small network of
> Linux servers that hangs onto the side of our Netware stuff. Mostly for
> training purposes but they are also being used lightly for production
> stuff, mainly file serving and backup. And the question suddenly came up
> when we wanted to change the Root password to something real and we didn't
> (don't) know how to do it except by logging onto each server individually.

There appears to be a NDS client available for Linux. Check the downloads
page at Novell's site. You may be able to integrate your Linux hosts with
the existing NDS infrastructure.

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