mlandau@Diamond.BBN.COM (Matt Landau) (12/05/86)
In comp.dcom.lans (article <267@umecs.UUCP>), ake@umecs.UUCP (]ke Sandgren) writes: >In article <408@savax.UUCP> dove@savax.UUCP writes: >>Can anyone suggest a software/hardware ethernet product for ms-dos ibm >>pc that: >> either uses TCP/IP protocols or at least can talk to TCP/IP based >> machines like Sun, VAX/Ultrix via FTP (or preferably NFS), SMTP and >> TELNET Having fairly extensive experience solving this problem, I'd suggest you look into either or both of the following: PC/TCP from FTP Software, Inc. P.O. Box 150 / Kendall Square Branch Boston, MA 02142 (617) 868-4878 PC-NFS from Sun Microsystems contact your local Sun office, or call 1-800-334-SUNM for ordering info PC/TCP is the commercial successor to the MIT PC/IP package; it is a good deal nicer than PC/IP ever was. PC/TCP provides the usual services including TFPT server and client, complete (and I mean *complete*) FTP client, telnet with VT100, H19, or glass terminal emulation, ping, etc. It also provides a very nice set of 4.2 style services, including rlogin, rexec, rsh, and rcp with Unix syntax. It's real nice being able to say "rcp myvax:dev/foo.exe test.exe" and have the right thing happen. PC/TCP also contains some SMTP support - there's a BSD-like mail program that sends using SMTP, and you can put the PC in SMTP server mode to receive mail, though you can't run the SMTP receiver in the background, so you have to dedicate a machine to it. The whole package talks to internet domain name servers, so you get fullblown name resolution if you're on the internet or run bind locally, which is a huge win. Basically, you can turn your little PC into a real live internet site, if that's what you really want to do. There are a lot of things I haven't mentioned about PC/TCP, like the fact that it's incredibly customizable, includes lots of goodies I haven't listed (finger, an lpr which sends to a remote printer host a la BSD Unix, a similar program for talking to Imagen print servers, TCP/IP library source available for a price, etc.) It's good. Look into it seriously. Four stars out of four. Highest possible recommendation. PC-NFS takes a different approach to connecting PC's and Unix machines, by providing an almost-transparent NFS client implementation under MS-DOS. In addition to the ability to mount remote directories on local virtual disks (e.g., drive E: is really myvax:/users/me), PC-NFS provides a suite of other services, including: a very decent telnet implementation (including the ability to subshell back to the PC with an active connection maintained by leaving the telnet progam in memory), the ability to redirect any of the DOS LPT devices to a remote printer (usually a LaserWriter) in ASCII, PostScript, or Diablo emulation mode access to yellow pages databases (including YP-style name resolution service, if you're running 3.2 yellow pages with the internet option) and a certain amount of login authentication via the YP password file a whole bunch of services running under the "NET" program that I gather are supposed to look like IBM's PC-NETWORK I say "almost-transparent" because there are a very few places where the differences between Unix and DOS filesystems show up. Most of these are of no concern unless you're writing code that wants to use DOS system calls to get information about the filesystem, and even then almost everything works correctly. On the user side, though, there are a couple of things to watch out for: Unix filenames that are not valid DOS filenames are mapped into unique, valid filenames. But the mapping produces names full of tildes that look funny, are hard to type, and aren't really very indicative of the original names. It's hard to see how this could have been done too much better, but if you use PC-NFS heavily, you'll get in the habit of using DOS-compatible names for files that are going to be shared End-of-line conventions differ between Unix (which uses newline) and DOS (which uses a two character cr, newline sequence), and files are NOT automatically converted on the fly. PC-NFS comes with a couple of programs that convert from DOS to Unix convention and back, but you have to do the conversion by hand; you can't just simply cat or edit any random file from any random (Unix or DOS) machine and have it look right. Why they didn't just do the mapping on the fly in the trapped DOS system calls, I don't know. This is, in my opinion, the most annoying thing about PC-NFS: you really have to know where a file lives before you can do things with it. On the other hand, if your goal is to let a whole bunch of PC's share files that aren't going to be accessed from Unix very often, then you won't be bothered by this particular misfeature. PC/TCP and PC-NFS are really trying to do two different jobs: TCP is in some sense a Unix hacker's product, and it will feel comfortable to the 4.2 user. NFS seems more of a corporate product, less configurable, but in many ways easier to use, designed for the PC user who doesn't necessarily know much about Unix and doesn't necessarily want to. Each has its place, and each does its job quite well, so pick the one that best suits your own needs. In fact, with a small amount of hacking, you can run them both simultaneously on the same Ethernet card! (That's what I've ended up doing - email me for details if you want them.) -- Matt Landau BBN Laboratories, Inc. mlandau@diamond.bbn.com 10 Moulton Street, Cambridge MA 02238 ...seismo!diamond.bbn.com!mlandau (617) 497-2429