Of the two sessions I've been to, this one was by far the most fun. Novell has released Beta1 of the Novell Client for Linux. This client was designed to replicate Client32 on a Novell Linux Desktop environment. This is a great boon to us network administrators since it permits us to run login-scripts to those stations.
The product as it sits right now does lack some features, but what it has is downright good. It'll run existing login scripts unchanged, which is an immense benefit. It isn't 100% comaptible yet, but that's why its a beta.
It'll support console/SSH logins! By using PAM, it'll allow such users to log in text-only, and get all the benefits. It'll mount their map-drives and give them a link to them in their HOME directory. How that works is pretty nifty.
Standard script entry. What that'll give is a symlink in their HOME directory to that location.
This does permit using more descriptive names, but the Windows client can't use those commands. That's nifty all by itself.
There is a kernel module that loads that permits access to Novell-hosted servers called novfs. This works a lot like nfs in that it is a virtual filesystem that permits remote resources to be mounted local. This replaced the ncpfs that's been around for a decade with something that, IMHO, actually works the way I need it to. This same kernel module permits the local machine to access all of that special Novell-only stuff like trustee editing, salvage & purge access, and volume stats.
They also support both GNOME and KDE desktops, though only the consoles hosted on Novell Linux Desktop are tested so far. It'll probably work on others, given enough fiddling. It is distributed in RPM format, among others, so there is a chance to try it out on other things like, say, Gentoo.
It also has plugins for Konquerer and Nautilus. Also nifty.
It isn't 100% complete yet. We can't use it quite yet since it doesn't do contextless login yet. It'll get there, possibly in the next point-rev, but not for this release. Sad. But at least they're building in the bits that'll permit it to happen. This IS a v1.0 build afterall.
They expect to have a release candidate build this summer some time.
The product as it sits right now does lack some features, but what it has is downright good. It'll run existing login scripts unchanged, which is an immense benefit. It isn't 100% comaptible yet, but that's why its a beta.
It'll support console/SSH logins! By using PAM, it'll allow such users to log in text-only, and get all the benefits. It'll mount their map-drives and give them a link to them in their HOME directory. How that works is pretty nifty.
map u:=servername/volume:%USERNAME%/Standard script entry. What that'll give is a symlink in their HOME directory to that location.
/mnt/novell/%USERNAME%/servername/volume/%USERNAME%/This does permit using more descriptive names, but the Windows client can't use those commands. That's nifty all by itself.
There is a kernel module that loads that permits access to Novell-hosted servers called novfs. This works a lot like nfs in that it is a virtual filesystem that permits remote resources to be mounted local. This replaced the ncpfs that's been around for a decade with something that, IMHO, actually works the way I need it to. This same kernel module permits the local machine to access all of that special Novell-only stuff like trustee editing, salvage & purge access, and volume stats.
They also support both GNOME and KDE desktops, though only the consoles hosted on Novell Linux Desktop are tested so far. It'll probably work on others, given enough fiddling. It is distributed in RPM format, among others, so there is a chance to try it out on other things like, say, Gentoo.
It also has plugins for Konquerer and Nautilus. Also nifty.
It isn't 100% complete yet. We can't use it quite yet since it doesn't do contextless login yet. It'll get there, possibly in the next point-rev, but not for this release. Sad. But at least they're building in the bits that'll permit it to happen. This IS a v1.0 build afterall.
They expect to have a release candidate build this summer some time.