From: richb@rkbhome.jti.com (Rich Braun) Subject: Re: LINUX and NOVELL 3.11 ????????? Date: 12 Feb 1993 02:59:20 GMT
hume@uni-paderborn.de (Hubertus Meier) writes:
>Is there someone who knows how I can integrate a "Linux-PC" into a Novell
>Net.
There's a lot of great freeware on Internet which allows DOS/Windows
users to get concurrent access to Novell and Unix (or Linux) server
machines on a LAN. My favorites are Pegasus, Trumpet, Charon, CUTCP,
and the crynwr packet drivers. (Pegasus gives you a DOS email; Charon
gives you a full-featured mail and print-queue gateway; Trumpet gives
you a DOS NNTP client which could talk to an NNTP server running on
Linux; and CUTCP gives you telnet and ftp from PCs into Linux).
Also available is the SOSS program to which I contributed; that would
allow Linux to mount a Novell server's filesystems, by setting up a
spare 286 or 386 PC to act as an NFS gateway.
Most of this stuff is on omnigate.clarkson.edu and other Internet
archive systems.
As for running an IPX stack under Linux to make it act as a client and/or
server, this would be an interesting project but it sounds like a major
undertaking. Not all of the components are documented; NetWare is a
proprietary architecture. You would probably have to pursuade Novell
into supporting the project.
A kludge solution would be to put two Ethernet boards into your Linux
system, using one to talk TCP/IP on the network and the other to run
Novell client or server software under DOSEMU.
Novell 3.11 servers can be upgraded (expensively) to support standard
TCP/IP and NFS services. If you've got the money, go for it. There is
some conjecture that Novell may be leaning more toward TCP/IP functions
in future offerings, but today their standard product only includes
IP routing.
I am tempted to set up Linux as our LAN's primary Internet server once
we put our company online. It would perform better than the commercial
Unix O/S we currently have, and I'm sure it would integrate well with
our predominantly Novell-based LAN. It might make management nervous,
but if things went smoothly it'd be a great asset to the company. (Besides,
I keep getting told "no" when I ask for the $$$ to buy another SysVr4
license...) As you can see from this posting's headers, it already makes
a great USENET system; my home machine performs better than the existing
LAN server. Setting up netnews on an extfs was a snap, though email was
trickier at the time I did it.
So in short, Linux could be used in conjunction with existing DOS-based
freeware to provide superior interpersonal communications services on
a Novell-based LAN. It can also get access to files on a Novell server.
One thing I know you can't do is run a freeware NFS client to get
access to files on a Linux box: no such client package exists.
-rich