nlane@well.sf.ca.us (Nathan D. Lane) (04/29/91)
I would like to know if anyone knows anything about making a Unix machine a file server for a DOS-based network. I'm trying to hide Unix boxes as network file servers until the world realizes how great Unix is :)! I know about PC-Interface and PC-NFS, but the licensing fees are very, very stiff - why would anyone want Unix at $300.00 a pop if they could have Novell for less? Any PD products on the net? They just need to provide Unix file and print services to PCs via a PC-style F: mapped drive to a Unix file-system (Telnet on TCP/IP won't do, these people want to see DOS, dir, copy, word, etc....) Thanks in advance. (Please e-mail leads and I will submit a summary.) -Nathan Lane Digital Technology Service, Santa Barbara, CA
lothar@tmcsys.UUCP (L. Hirschbiegel) (05/02/91)
In article <24479@well.sf.ca.us> nlane@well.sf.ca.us (Nathan D. Lane) writes: > >I would like to know if anyone knows anything about making a Unix machine >a file server for a DOS-based network. I'm trying to hide Unix boxes >as network file servers until the world realizes how great Unix is :)! >I know about PC-Interface and PC-NFS, but the licensing fees are very, very >stiff - why would anyone want Unix at $300.00 a pop if they could have ^^^^^^^^^^ >Novell for less? Any PD products on the net? They just need to provide ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >Unix file and print services to PCs via a PC-style F: mapped drive to >a Unix file-system (Telnet on TCP/IP won't do, these people want to see >DOS, dir, copy, word, etc....) > >Thanks in advance. (Please e-mail leads and I will submit a summary.) > >-Nathan Lane >Digital Technology Service, Santa Barbara, CA I disagree. We are using a 50+ user Novell network and also a 20+ user PC-Interface network here. The price for Netware 3.1 here in germany was a hefty 8000 $, and thats JUST the base system. Want some TCP/IP? Sure, just another $$$ PLUS a dedicated workstation. Want some good CCmail system and SMTP? Sure, just another 4000$ PLUS a dedicated workstation. Want some NFS? Sure, just... Want some bigger (>1GB) harddisk? Sure, but since Netware keeps its disk caches/buffers/tables completely in memory (for speed reasons) you may need some more RAM. Too bad, if your machine cannot cope with more than 16MB... Just buy a bigger one! In contrast look at a PC-Interface based DOS-LAN. You name it, you have it! Full UNIX, TCP/IP, SMTP, NFS, hundreds (:-) of mail systems, even SLIP connections and things like that. File services are the same as for "pure" DOS-LANs, but additionally users can log into the UNIX server and/or even start remote job executions there (from DOS!). All our wide area network routers speak TCP/IP and DECnet, so there is no need to setup expansive gateways for IPX<->Rest_Of_The_World. No extra cost for all that. And don't forget: your server is still a full workstation under UNIX or maybe under VPIX/DOS (if the user insists on that:-() Just to put things right: this is no Netware bashing. I've just found it much cheaper to build up a UNIX based DOS-LAN - and I've done it now a couple of times. L. Hirschbiegel ==================================================================== L. Hirschbiegel, AEG Produktionsautomatisierung, Frankfurt (Germany) unido!aega84!lh -46-69-66414316 ====================================================================
jim@tiamat.fsc.com ( IT Manager) (05/04/91)
In article <24479@well.sf.ca.us>, nlane@well.sf.ca.us (Nathan D. Lane) writes: > > I would like to know if anyone knows anything about making a Unix machine > a file server for a DOS-based network. I'm trying to hide Unix boxes > as network file servers until the world realizes how great Unix is :)! > I know about PC-Interface and PC-NFS, but the licensing fees are very, very > stiff - why would anyone want Unix at $300.00 a pop if they could have > Novell for less? Any PD products on the net? They just need to provide I'm not sure what you mean here. If you already have the Unix machine, adding the PC-Interface server ($450, which includes one $195 DOS Bridge package), and how many ever DOS Bridges (at $195) would only be more expensive than Novell if you were talking about more than say 25 PC's. Not to mention the fact that you'd have to have another machine to be the Novell server, which also ties up financial resources. I'm not saying PC-Interface is the best solution (we're going to use it, cause it's small, simple, and we can get the server code for both SCO Unix and HP-UX without paying a fortune), but I don't think it's as uncompetive against Novell as you mention above. > Unix file and print services to PCs via a PC-style F: mapped drive to > a Unix file-system (Telnet on TCP/IP won't do, these people want to see > DOS, dir, copy, word, etc....) I have seen SCO's Lan Manager/X listed in catalogs, but I don't know if it's shipping yet. This would also provide what you're looking for. It's licensed in "user chunks", so you may have to pay for more users than you need. ------------- James B. O'Connor jim@tiamat.fsc.com Ahlstrom Filtration, Inc. 615/821-4022 x. 651
ggvvgg@mixcom.COM (Dave Fenske) (05/04/91)
In article <833@tiamat.fsc.com> jim@tiamat.fsc.com ( IT Manager) writes: >In article <24479@well.sf.ca.us>, nlane@well.sf.ca.us (Nathan D. Lane) writes: >> >> I would like to know if anyone knows anything about making a Unix machine >> a file server for a DOS-based network. I'm trying to hide Unix boxes >> as network file servers until the world realizes how great Unix is :)! >> I know about PC-Interface and PC-NFS, but the licensing fees are very, very >> stiff - why would anyone want Unix at $300.00 a pop if they could have >> Novell for less? Any PD products on the net? They just need to provide How strange it seems. A Unix-based product makes it in LAN Magazine as product of the year, and yet it seems such a well-kept secret. Atlantix Corporation, in Boca Raton, Florida, makes software that does just what was asked about. That is, it uses a PC running Unix (or Xenix) as a file server. A real, live file server for DOS files. The kind you map to a network drive (F:, G: or whatever). You can also share devices, such as printers, modems, plotters and whatnot. In short, it behaves like a real live network solution, EXCEPT, you also get a server that can do more than serve files. It can run Unix programs too. If you're running Windows, you can have DOS and Unix programs going at the same time. Is it expensive? The previous message seemed to suggest that it would be. Well, no it isn't. At a list price of $2,595 for their low-end package, you also get an Ethernet card. You can also get it with Arcnet, Twisted Pair, Token Ring, etc. If you add the $2,595 to the cost of Unix run-time (about $900, you get a total which is somewhat less than the cost of Netware 386 plus a network card. In fact, the total is less than half! On the DOS side, the drivers are smaller than Novell's, which means you also save memory in your DOS machines. If you already have Novell, this package (CocoNet) will integrate smoothly with it.
larry@nstar.rn.com (Larry Snyder) (05/04/91)
jim@tiamat.fsc.com ( IT Manager) writes: >I'm not sure what you mean here. If you already have the Unix machine, >adding the PC-Interface server ($450, which includes one $195 DOS Bridge >package), and how many ever DOS Bridges (at $195) would only be more >expensive than Novell if you were talking about more than say 25 PC's. Not to >mention the fact that you'd have to have another machine to be the Novell >server, which also ties up financial resources. I have PCI here - and have noticed some problems when running PCI along with NCSA telnet on the same machine -- have you tried this combination? -- Larry Snyder, NSTAR Public Access Unix 219-289-0287/317-251-7391 HST/PEP/V.32/v.32bis/v.42bis regional UUCP mapping coordinator {larry@nstar.rn.com, ..!uunet!nstar.rn.com!larry}
geoff@hinode.East.Sun.COM (Geoff Arnold @ Sun BOS - R.H. coast near the top) (05/04/91)
And of course if your Unix box supports NFS (and what self-respecting system doesn't? :-) you can buy any one of the various DOS NFS clients from Sun, FTP, Wollongong, B&W, Siemens, etc. Geoff -- Geoff Arnold, PC-NFS architect, Sun Microsystems. (geoff@East.Sun.COM) -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Sun Microsystems PC Distributed Systems ... -- -- ... soon to be a part of SunTech (stay tuned for details) --
tony@jassys.UUCP (Tony Holden) (05/06/91)
> In article <24479@well.sf.ca.us> nlane@well.sf.ca.us (Nathan D. Lane) writes: > > > >I know about PC-Interface and PC-NFS, but the licensing fees are very, very > >stiff - why would anyone want Unix at $300.00 a pop if they could have Unless Locus has just rasied their prices on me, it ain't $300 a pop. It's $195 per seat on the DOS side. They don't have a dealer here in North Texas so I bought straight from them at $165 for 10 copies. They do have a serial number based copy protection scheme that sucks big-time if you are planning to have more than a few users. I have to keep track of all of the floppies (gee, haven't I heard that before :-)). They say they are *looking* that a site licesen (sp) type setup. They damm well better come hurry up before I start looking at something else ( hint, hint ) -- Tony Holden live on the edge, tony@jassys Bank in Texas
jdeitch@jadpc.cts.com (Jim Deitch) (05/07/91)
In article <5940@eastapps.East.Sun.COM> geoff@east.sun.com (Geoff Arnold @ Sun BOS - R.H. coast near the top) writes: >And of course if your Unix box supports NFS (and what self-respecting >system doesn't? :-) you can buy any one of the various DOS NFS >clients from Sun, FTP, Wollongong, B&W, Siemens, etc. > >Geoff > >-- Geoff Arnold, PC-NFS architect, Sun Microsystems. (geoff@East.Sun.COM) -- >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >-- Sun Microsystems PC Distributed Systems ... -- >-- ... soon to be a part of SunTech (stay tuned for details) -- Be warned though, ISC NFS v2.1 only supports version 2 locking. PC-NFS v3.0.1 needs version 3 locking. Also when starting up the Interactive product, down any slip connections, start NFS, bring up any slip connections. Jim -- ARPANET: jadpc!jdeitch@nosc.mil INTERNET: jdeitch@jadpc.cts.com UUCP: nosc!jadpc!jdeitch
pjh@mccc.edu (Pete Holsberg) (05/07/91)
In article <683@mixcom.COM> ggvvgg@mixcom.COM (Dave Fenske) writes:
=How strange it seems. A Unix-based product makes it in LAN Magazine as
=product of the year, and yet it seems such a well-kept secret.
=
=Atlantix Corporation, in Boca Raton, Florida, makes software that does just
=what was asked about. That is, it uses a PC running Unix (or Xenix) as
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I was under the impression that they supported only SCO *NIX. Is that
no longer true?
Pete
--
Prof. Peter J. Holsberg Mercer County Community College
Voice: 609-586-4800 Engineering Technology, Computers and Math
UUCP:...!princeton!mccc!pjh 1200 Old Trenton Road, Trenton, NJ 08690
Internet: pjh@mccc.edu Trenton Computer Festival -- 4/20-21/91dag@fciva.FRANKCAP.COM (Daniel A. Graifer) (05/08/91)
In article <5940@eastapps.East.Sun.COM> geoff@east.sun.com (Geoff Arnold @ Sun BOS - R.H. coast near the top) writes: >And of course if your Unix box supports NFS (and what self-respecting >system doesn't? :-) you can buy any one of the various DOS NFS >clients from Sun, FTP, Wollongong, B&W, Siemens, etc. > >Geoff > >-- Geoff Arnold, PC-NFS architect, Sun Microsystems. (geoff@East.Sun.COM) -- >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >-- Sun Microsystems PC Distributed Systems ... -- >-- ... soon to be a part of SunTech (stay tuned for details) -- I haven't looked PC-based NFS clients for a couple of years, but last time I looked, my main objection was the painful printer support. You have to trap your printer output to a file and then use a separate command to send this to the lpr daemon on your host. I know this is caused by the brain-damaged way that DOS applications do printer I/O. Since they assume they own the entire system, they finish a print job by failing to send any more characters. At most, an option is provided to send a formfeed to clear the last page out of the printer. Networks designed to support DOS deal with this by setting a timeout. Output to the LPTn device is spooled, and after a period with no activity, the contents are queued for printing, and the spool file reset. Both Novell (in this case Portable Netware) and Locus Computing's PC-Interface can do this. My point is that this is much cleaner and more obvious to your existing DOS users. Dan -- Daniel A. Graifer Coastal Capital Funding Corp. Sr. Vice President, Financial Systems 7900 Westpark Dr. Suite A-130 (703)821-3244 McLean, VA 22102 uunet!fciva!dag fciva.FRANKCAP.COM!dag@uunet.uu.net
richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) (05/08/91)
>How strange it seems. A Unix-based product makes it in LAN Magazine as >product of the year, and yet it seems such a well-kept secret. > > [...] > >Is it expensive? The previous message seemed to suggest that it would be. >Well, no it isn't. At a list price of $2,595 for their low-end package, >you also get an Ethernet card. You can also get it with Arcnet, Twisted Pair, >Token Ring, etc. If you add the $2,595 to the cost of Unix run-time (about >$900, you get a total which is somewhat less than the cost of Netware 386 >plus a network card. In fact, the total is less than half! Yow! Do you get a computer for that price too? I hope so. The other packages being discussed here are way less than that. >On the DOS side, the drivers are smaller than Novell's, which means you also >save memory in your DOS machines. Everybody is smaller than Novell (and cheaper). -- Richard Foulk richard@pegasus.com
geoff@hinode.East.Sun.COM (Geoff Arnold @ Sun BOS - R.H. coast near the top) (05/08/91)
Quoth dag@fciva.UUCP (Daniel A. Graifer) (in <603@fciva.FRANKCAP.COM>): #I know this is caused by the brain-damaged way that DOS applications do #printer I/O. Since they assume they own the entire system, they finish a #print job by failing to send any more characters. At most, an option is #provided to send a formfeed to clear the last page out of the printer. #Networks designed to support DOS deal with this by setting a timeout. #Output to the LPTn device is spooled, and after a period with no activity, #the contents are queued for printing, and the spool file reset. Both Novell #(in this case Portable Netware) and Locus Computing's PC-Interface can do #this. My point is that this is much cleaner and more obvious to your existing #DOS users. For PC-NFS it has always (since 1986) been the case that you have the options of print-on-timeout, print-on-process-exit, print-on-hotkey and print-on-special-command. It has never been necessary to print to file, except for a few oddball apps. I'll let FTP, Wollongong and B&W discuss their schemes. -- Geoff Arnold, PC-NFS architect, Sun Microsystems. (geoff@East.Sun.COM) -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Sun Microsystems PC Distributed Systems ... -- -- ... soon to be a part of SunTech (stay tuned for details) --
jim@tiamat.fsc.com ( IT Manager) (05/10/91)
In article <1991May04.133841.15629@nstar.rn.com>, larry@nstar.rn.com (Larry Snyder) writes: > > I have PCI here - and have noticed some problems when running PCI along > with NCSA telnet on the same machine -- have you tried this combination? No. One reason I like PCI is that Locus's TCP/IP product drops right in and works with PCI. While I understand it's not free like NCSA telnet, it's a nice solution nonetheless. I'd imagine that anything else that needs to talk to the ethernet is going to conflict with the way PCI talks to the ethernet. Even Locus's TCP/IP includes an "interface" module which interfaces the PCI Bridge driver to the TCP/IP driver. Good luck. ------------- James B. O'Connor jim@tiamat.fsc.com Ahlstrom Filtration, Inc. 615/821-4022 x. 651
jim@tiamat.fsc.com ( IT Manager) (05/10/91)
In article <6@jassys.UUCP>, tony@jassys.UUCP (Tony Holden) writes: > > They do have a serial number based copy protection scheme that sucks > big-time if you are planning to have more than a few users. I have to > keep track of all of the floppies (gee, haven't I heard that before > :-)). They say they are *looking* that a site licesen (sp) type setup. > They damm well better come hurry up before I start looking at > something else ( hint, hint ) IMHO, there's two basic ways to go at this. 1) Make the server an "X-user server", and the DOS software free. Now, the server would only allow X number of connected clients, and the user could use one set of disks to install on the PC's. This is how HP's LAN/Manager X does things. As long as you can increment the server license in small, affordable chunks (i.e. 2, 4, or 8 at a time), I really like this method. Locus could also make a little extra money by selling the DOS user manuals as a separate item, or users could save money by NOT buying them (e.g. we aren't going to give the PCI manuals to the DOS users, since we don't want them playing around with it). 2) Leave the software the same way (I like the inexpensive servers, too), but take the serial numbers out of the binary and use a "branding" process to put the serial number in at installation. Thus, a site could buy one copy which included the media, manual, and serial number, and then buy extra copies which consisted only of the serial numbers (and optionally the manual). You still have to keep track of which machine went to which serial number, but you wouldn't have to keep up with a bunch of disks. Personally, I don't mind it the way it is. My dept. (IT) picks up the tab for the server, and then when a user wants to add a PC, *THEIR* dept has to pick up the tab for everything to get the PC working the way they want. If they want it on the network, they'll have to pay for the brdige. :-) ------------- James B. O'Connor jim@tiamat.fsc.com Ahlstrom Filtration, Inc. 615/821-4022 x. 651
richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) (05/12/91)
> >For PC-NFS it has always (since 1986) been the case that you have the >options of print-on-timeout, print-on-process-exit, print-on-hotkey and >print-on-special-command. It has never been necessary to print to file, except >for a few oddball apps. > And these options have NEVER worked correctly. -- Richard Foulk richard@pegasus.com
gar@spiff.UUCP (Gordon Runkle) (05/14/91)
In article <1991May12.062141.28302@pegasus.com> richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) writes: > >For PC-NFS it has always (since 1986) been the case that you have the >options of print-on-timeout, print-on-process-exit, print-on-hotkey and >print-on-special-command. It has never been necessary to print to file, except >for a few oddball apps. > And these options have NEVER worked correctly. Nonsense. Certainly from version 3.00 (current is 3.5) they have worked correctly. -=gordon=- -- Gordon A. Runkle, Runkle Research UUCP: uunet!cmi486!spiff!gar INTERNET: gar@spiff.cminc.com PHONE: 703-522-0825 202-955-8412 The difference between 'theory' and 'practice' in theory is less than the difference between 'theory' and 'practice' in practice. --Unknown sage
richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) (05/16/91)
> > > >For PC-NFS it has always (since 1986) been the case that you have the > >options of print-on-timeout, print-on-process-exit, print-on-hotkey and > >print-on-special-command. It has never been necessary to print to file, except > >for a few oddball apps. > > > > And these options have NEVER worked correctly. > >Nonsense. Certainly from version 3.00 (current is 3.5) they have >worked correctly. I admittedly have not tried version 3.5. We paid for a few upgrades that only caused more problems than they solved and then took matters into our own hands and fixed the bugs ourselves (after getting strong hints from the Sun support phones that they weren't interested and had no plans for another release.) The most useful and perhaps foolproof way of handling printing is to use the timeout option. Set it to, perhaps, ten or 15 seconds and things just work nicely ... except that Sun simply started the timer from the beginning of the job, instead of using the time since the last character was sent! We wondered why the default timeout was set in minutes instead of seconds. Send a medium-sized print job and watch it get cut off in the middle. (Or set the timeout to 15-minutes or more to cover the worst case.) With those constraints and a few other bugs thrown in printing was generally flaky. So we patched their redirector so that it worked correctly. We paid money for upgrades that weren't. The truth is that PC-NFS is a great product, that apparently had its printer code written by the Sun receptionist. (And marketing done by Howdy Doody.) It's a product that given the slightest bit of interest from Sun could have given Novell a real run for its money. Simpler, better, faster more flexible, way cheaper and fairly solid (once you fix the printing). -- Richard Foulk richard@pegasus.com