Hi Managers:
I got some additonal feedback on FNS that I thought was
worth passing on. FNS and XFN in Solaris is compliant
with X/Open Preliminary Specification for Federated
Naming, (July 1994) endorsed by major vendors such as
IBM, Hewlett-Packard, SunSoft, DEC, Siemens-Nixdorf,
and Open Software Foundation (OSF).
It's purpose is not to bring all of these different directories
and databases into a single source but rather to create
a single interface by which to query all of these different
directories and databases. So, by running FNS you can
query people, hosts, printers, filesystems, etc from NIS,
NIS+, DNS, UFS, LDAP, NDS, CDS, etc... with a single
syntax or query command. A file path syntax might look
something like: org/paradyne.com/user/penrod/fs/usr/myfile
In essence... instead of being able to fold by NIS into my
LDAP... (my original goal) I've got yet another directory
server. :-( Maybe it should be called YADS. ;-)
So, where you might have used 'ypmatch', or 'nslookup', or
'ldapsearch', or 'ls'... you can now use 'fnlookup' to query
all of these directories. FNS provides a whole API for
programmers to incorporate this into new software.
Right now there isn't much software taking advantage
of it yet. I haven't found anyone actually using it
"on purpose", but it may well be something we're all
using a year or two from now if Sun and other vendors
continue to roll it into their code.
Some useful URLs given to me:
http://www.sun.com/software/events/presentations/SPG4.Seligman/SPG4.Seligman.html
http://www.sun.com/solaris/networking/xfn.html
http://www.tgmi.com/infodoc/data/13217.html *I found this one very useful
Thanks to:
Janet Hoo <Janet.Hoo@Ebay.Sun.COM>
"Robert G. Ferrell" <rferrell@usgs.gov>
gibian@stars1.hanscom.af.mil (Marc S. Gibian)
I hope someone finds this remotely interesting. :-)
Regards,
dan penrod
-
Dan Penrod wrote:
> Managers:
>
> My original question is included below. I was hoping to
> discover how Sun Solaris FNS (Federated Name Service)
> is supposed to bring together NIS, DNS, and LDAP. We
> were hoping to centralize our NIS and LDAP databases
> together as one.
>
> I only got one response after 3 full days.
> gibian@stars1.hanscom.af.mil (Marc S. Gibian) suggests that
> FNS might be a POSIX standard Sun is incorporating into
> Solaris and that Sun is "layoring" in NIS. Marc is using FNS
> to centralize admin for SunSoft Print Client (SSPC).
>
> I was hoping for more. Oh well. :-(
>
> Thanks for the bandwidth,
> dan
>
> --
>
> Dan Penrod wrote:
>
> > We're using LDAP (Netscape's) as our corporate directory server for
> > email and calendar authentication. We want a solution that merges LDAP
> > to our NIS passwd table, that is... a single UserAccount/Password table
> > that can serve both NIS requests as well as LDAP requests.
> >
> > I saw Nina Burns-Pomeroy's Summary the other day; "NIS and Netscape's
> > Directory Server", which suggested the use of 'ypldap', which appears to
> > be an experimental beta package being developed by a company called
> > Xedoc. Basically, it's an NIS package with a ypserv daemon that refers
> > to an LDAP database rather than the old NIS dbm tables.
> >
> > My question is this... Isn't Sun's FNS (Federated Name Service), which
> > is bundled into Solaris 2.6, supposed to consolidate NIS, DNS, and
> > LDAP??? I'm having a hard time fully understanding what FNS is supposed
> > to do as I suspect many others are. So I'd like to ask a few questions
> > regarding FNS.
> >
> > Are there many of you using FNS or evaluating FNS yet?
> >
> > Is it, in fact, supposed to merge NIS(NIS+), DNS and LDAP?
> >
> > Should it work with either NIS or NIS+?
> >
> > How might it compare to a YPLDAP (like the one mentioned above)?
> >
> > All thoughts, opinions, and experiences with FNS are welcome.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > dan
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