IPX and Linux

Alan Cox first developed IPX support for the Linux kernel in 1985.[83] Initially it was useful for little more than routing IPX datagrams. Since then, other people, notably Greg Page, have provided additional support.[84] Greg developed the IPX configuration utilities that we’ll use in this chapter to configure our interfaces. Volker Lendecke developed support for the NCP filesystem to allow Linux to mount volumes on network-connected NetWare fileservers.[85] He also created tools that allow printing to and from Linux. Ales Dryak and Martin Stover each independently developed NCP fileserver daemons for Linux that allow network-connected NetWare clients to mount Linux directories exported as NCP volumes, just as the NFS daemon allows Linux to serve filesystems to clients using the NFS protocol.[86] Caldera Systems, Inc. offers a commercial and fully licensed NetWare client and server that supports the latest Novell standards, including support for the NetWare Directory Service (NDS).[87]

Today,therefore, Linux supports a wide range of services that allow systems to be integrated with existing Novell-based networks.

Caldera Support

Although we don’t detail the Caldera NetWare support in this chapter, it is important that we talk about it. Caldera was founded by Ray Noorda, the former CEO of Novell. The Caldera NetWare support is a commercial product and fully supported by Caldera. Caldera provides the NetWare support as a component of their own Linux distribution ...

Get Linux Network Administrator's Guide, Second Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.