[OT] Netware using standard protocols

[Steve Wendt]

On Thu, 18 May 2000, Simon Bowring wrote:

> I did know that it now used ip, but I assume they still just use 
> it as a transport - their file serving protocols are still 
> proprietry aren't they? 

I'm not sure of all of the protocols involved, but I know that they
replaced SAP (for IPX) with SLP (Service Locator Protocol), which is
apparently an RFC.

> I didn't know they use XFree86 though - I'm amazed! Is it also called 
> "Novell Linux" ;-)

No, they don't even mention that it's XFree86, they just say that they can
run a GUI on the server.  Of course, you don't WANT to run a GUI on the
server (incredible waste of resources), but the idiots running NT
(and OS/2, to a certain extent) thought it was a good idea.  At least you
can run export it to run on a remote X session.

Under this GUI, the main thing you can do is run their Java based
administration tool, which lets you administrate the server from the
server, rather than it being totally client based.  On the client side,
you're pretty stuck using Lose32 to administrate now.  :(

Last time I tried, their Java tool wouldn't run under OS/2, but it's been
a couple of years since I played with any of this stuff (NW5 beta).