Services for UNIX
Randy Hill
CMS4030
Microsoft’s Services for UNIX is a cross platform tool that allows users operating in a windows environment to talk and interact with UNIX computers and servers. Services for UNIX is a windows subsystem that can only be installed on windows 2000 pro and XP pro, and also 2000 server and 2003 server. It allows users from the windows world to talk directly to UNIX servers, and run UNIX applications. A lot of companies run UNIX platform servers in today’s market place, however most end users are much more familiar to the windows operating system. This will now allow companies to continue operations under their current platforms, and allow their end users to function on windows based computers.
Services for UNIX (SFU) will allow you to map UNIX drives and run UNIX applications under the windows operating system. In a web article that reviewed the newest release of SFU version 3.5, the author Roberto J. Dohnert quoted Microsoft claims the SFU will support 90% of UNIX application. In his article Review of Windows Services for UNIX 3.5 Dohnert claims that so far SFU has worked with all of his UNIX applications so far. I also use SFU in my place of work, however we do not run UNIX applications with SFU. My company runs a native UNIX environment. All desktop pc’s are also UNIX systems running a UNIX GUI desktop. Since most of our users are not familiar with the UNIX environment they have Citrix where they can mainframe into a windows session and operate a windows desktop. I work as the head administrator of the Citrix mainframes. On the windows mainframes we installed SFU so our users can map back to their Unix home directories and access their files. Since we are new to the technology, this is our only implementation; however we are curious about testing its other functionalities.
The way SFU works is it is installed on the windows platform to talk to the other UNIX boxes. There are different configurations that can be installed on setup. The two main functionalities are setting it up as a NIS Server or a Client. Once you choose your setup, you will be able to function as either or a server or a client, but there are some tricks to using this. Your username for the NIS Domain has to be the same as your windows Active directory username. It uses Name Mapping and Group Mapping to set your permissions. So lets say your NIS username is user1, your windows domain user account also needs to be user1. Then SFU will map the windows SID to the UNIX SID, and you will have permission to everything on your UNIX side. If you are operating like a client, you will need to add in the NIS domain name and server. You also have to go under network neighborhood and add the UNIX servers in as a favorite LAN. This setup is not for beginners. But using the services is very easy after the initial setup.
When it comes to disadvantages of a free software, it is hard to criticize. However there is still one feature I found that is quite restrictive of SFU. SFU will lock files when they think they are still in use. For normal documents this may not be a problem. One feature I wanted to use SFU for is holding user’s .pst files for Outlook. This becomes a problem, if the .pst file is stored on UNIX using SFU, because it will lock the file, and a user will not be able to open his Outlook file to check his mail. So this might be an improvement Microsoft can make on its next release, but over all it’s a great piece of software.