In a message dated: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 09:17:19 EDT
"Jerry Callen" said:
>What really bugs me is that *Microsoft*, of all companies, is
>making an effort to do something about this, with the widespread
>use of Kerberos (corrupted or otherwise). If we Unix dweebs had
>gotten our act together and done something about replacing NFS
>before this, we wouldn't be in the position of squabbling about
>root access to Unix machines while Microsoft goes on conquering
>the computing world.
Unix has had Kerberos for years, MS is just now catching up. Kerberos does
not replace NFS, it's and authentication mechanism more analagous to NIS.
There are Unix shops using Kerberos for authentication, it's just not
widespread. Why? There's not really much demand for security from the
market, therefore the commercial Unix vendors never shipped it as a default.
Security is just now becoming a hot item in the marketplace. MS as usual, is
just very good at timing their entry into a certain market. They've done
nothing new, just timed it right, and are marketing it as something new.
>Let me pose these questions: what IS available in the Unix world
>for secure file service? I thought Project Athena was supposed to
>nail this problem, but with what? There's AFS, too. Is anyone
>USING any of these systems? Or are we all just using NFS and
>Samba (as I am...) and grousing about the problems?
AFS is a replacement for NFS. I don't know whether it's any better or worse,
or any more secure for that matter, just different. NFS is absolutely the
worst solution out there for a distributed filesystem, except for all the rest.
Why is NFS so widespread? It was developed by a leading commercial Unix
vendor (Sun) and then given away. Other commercial vendors picked this up and
everyone in the spirit of competition then needed to be interoperable, so it
spread. Nothing else has come along with that kind of commercial backing
since. All the other filesystems out there have always been university type
research projects that the corporate world hasn't trusted. How can sue
for something that breaks when you obtained the source for free off the net?
(sound familiar?).
--
Seeya,
Paul
----
"I always explain our company via interpretive dance.
I meet lots of interesting people that way."
Niall Kavanagh, 10 April, 2000
If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!
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