5 ms·

> Enterprise management is impossible with Microsoft's domain based Windows NT networking. Microsoft Active Directory, part of the ever later Windows 2000, was

> Enterprise management is impossible with Microsoft's domain based Windows NT networking. Microsoft Active Directory, part of the ever later Windows 2000, was supposed to fix this, but it now appears MAD may be a failure (Microsoft is already trying to sell its shortcomings as "features" and it isn't even out yet). Oh, poor Novell. This is all before my time, but to me Novell's legacy is just "that company in the SCO vs. Novell lawsuit" and occasionally seeing IPX traffic from e.g. printers in Wireshark. It's odd to look at what could have been, from a once dominant player that's disappeared into "tech myth" now. This really does seem to be an attempt at smiling in the face of death though -- I've never played with NetWare but it's not hard to see how Win2k would capture the market; setting up an AD domain is a click-through process on a familiar OS/GUI, why bother licensing and learning something like NetWare if Windows is good enough...

gtirloni 4y ago
What could it have been? Only thing I heard about Novell back in the day was how awful and unreliable it was.
- zabzonk 4y ago
  Awful, yes, unreliable no. What was unreliable was the network infrastructure - coax ethernet, or even worse frozen hosepipe and/or token ring. It was a happy day when twisted-pair, star topology ethernet was introduced.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    I'll just pierce this thicknet and add a transceiver here...that's pretty good security.
    - zabzonk 4y ago
      I wonder if this ever was a security breach? Not saying it wasn't. just wondering if anyone has a real world example of such. My problem with thick ethernet was that unless you got the angle of the cable exactly right, the cable's inflexibility would lift the workstation you were connecting off the desk. at least thin didn't (mostly) have this problem.
      - jim02672 4y ago
        Huh? You were connecting thicknet (10BASE5) directly to the back of workstations??
  - skipkey 4y ago
    We had a Netware 3 server back in the early 90s that at one point had about 18 months of uptime between reboots. I probably still have a picture of the server screen after it passed the 1 year mark. I haven’t had anything since that could go so long between bounces. It only ran file and print services on 10-base-2 co-ax tho.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      > I haven’t had anything since that could go so long between bounces. Er. I've seen servers accidentally get into years of uptime from neglect; modern OSs are pretty stable.
    - theamk 4y ago
      that's a joke, right? I recently rebooted my Linux desktop after 2+ years of uptime because a random opengl app finally crashed kernel display driver. And servers which do just one thing can keep going for years, until power fails or its time to decommission them.
    - seized 4y ago
      > I haven’t had anything since that could go so long between bounces. .... Really? Ignoring the "nothing should have that uptime due to security patches" best practice, almost everything should be able to do that barring power or hardware failure. My OpenIndiana NAS has done >1 year uptime two or three times now. My OpnSense firewall did once (too much road warrioring for a period) but could do it easily again. Linux VMs have done that many times for me when I've been lazy on patching or too busy My ESXi hosts do that too. Thats just my basement homelab, nothing special. I installed a cluster of Windows 2003 servers in a customer site a looong time ago that did over 1000 days uptime (no internet access/customer didn't patch/etc). I even had a Windows XP laptop in my garage 10+ years ago that did nothing but Chrome and RDP client go over 400 days before I tripped on the power cord. Yes, systems should be patched and all that. But really, anything not forcing updates should be able to do a year.
      - bruce511 4y ago
        I agree that current systems should have no problem running for years between reboots, but which for verious reasons would not be a good idea now. (conversely my current desktop boots so fast that I now shut it down every day. Saves a bit of power, and a clean start to each day feels good.) But it's important to understand that back in the 90s running a machine for long periods was unusual. 18 months is certainly notable. Of course there were no security patches back then (and largely no need for them because the always-on Internet wouldn't happen for another few years.) It's hard to understate just how unreliable tech was in the 20th century. Cars broke down a lot. Computers needed rebooting all the time. The risks taken during Mercury, Gemini and Apollo would be considered completely reckless now. It has ever been thus. In the first world war more pilots died from mechanical failure than from enemy fire. First we make it. Then we make it fast. Then we make it reliable.
- nradov 4y ago
  NetWare was reliable as long as you used high quality hardware and didn't run any third-party applications on the server. It didn't support real memory protection or preemptive multitasking so if you tried to run a database or email application on the NetWare server itself then it got shaky. But the core file and printer sharing features were fast and rock solid.
torh 4y ago
I remember Novells NDS (directory service) to be miles head of Microsoft AD back in Windows 2000, and even many years after. But AD was included "for free" in Windows, and the rest is history...
- mc32 4y ago
  Apparently there were places that Leo mete are around for printer server services as it apparently handles printer queues better, so they said.
  - Scramblejams 4y ago
    Having trouble parsing this. Can you please restate?
    - mc32 4y ago
      Autocorrection mangled it. Some places kept them around as print servers… (after NT displaced them as directory servers)
- Neil44 4y ago
  It’s hard to beat free. And of course MS is now trying to kill on prem AD in favour of subscription based AAD.
- lproven 4y ago
  > But AD was included "for free" in Windows, and the rest is history... I don't think that's a valid point. NDS was included for free in all versions of Netware from 4.0 onwards. The Windows client for Netware was free, and Netware came with the Windows management tools and so on. I upgraded one company's network with a fleet of new workstations in about 1999. A few previous consultants told them it was impossible because they'd lost the installation media for the network client. Back then, it was new, but they didn't know you could just... download the client from Novell's website. So I did, and switched out a fleet of 16-bit Windows boxes for NT 4 clients and the official Novell client. No CD drives: just bootstrap NT install with a DOS floppy, fetch the installation files from the server. Saved enough cost to pay for a few extra workstations. It wasn't about price. The 2 killer factors of NT 4 Server displacing Netware 4 were: * Ease of use: you didn't need to know what you were doing with NT. It's Windows. Click around, click "Next" and "OK" enough, you can get it going. * Netware servers were effectively dedicated to file and print. There were a few server apps but many of them destroyed Netware's famed stability. NT 4 Server is just Windows and you can run anything you like on the server, while it's still being a server.
mav88 4y ago
>Novell's legacy is just "that company in the SCO vs. Novell lawsuit" That was Caldera in all but name. The Novell people became Tarantella.
- bitwize 4y ago
  Wrong side. SCO was acquired by Caldera and became new!SCO. The original SCO people became Tarantella.
  - mav88 4y ago
    Disturbing. I think I'm becoming dyslexic. You're quite right.

gtirloni 4y ago

What could it have been? Only thing I heard about Novell back in the day was how awful and unreliable it was.

zabzonk 4y ago
Awful, yes, unreliable no. What was unreliable was the network infrastructure - coax ethernet, or even worse frozen hosepipe and/or token ring. It was a happy day when twisted-pair, star topology ethernet was introduced.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  I'll just pierce this thicknet and add a transceiver here...that's pretty good security.
  - zabzonk 4y ago
    I wonder if this ever was a security breach? Not saying it wasn't. just wondering if anyone has a real world example of such. My problem with thick ethernet was that unless you got the angle of the cable exactly right, the cable's inflexibility would lift the workstation you were connecting off the desk. at least thin didn't (mostly) have this problem.
    - jim02672 4y ago
      Huh? You were connecting thicknet (10BASE5) directly to the back of workstations??
- skipkey 4y ago
  We had a Netware 3 server back in the early 90s that at one point had about 18 months of uptime between reboots. I probably still have a picture of the server screen after it passed the 1 year mark. I haven’t had anything since that could go so long between bounces. It only ran file and print services on 10-base-2 co-ax tho.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    > I haven’t had anything since that could go so long between bounces. Er. I've seen servers accidentally get into years of uptime from neglect; modern OSs are pretty stable.
  - theamk 4y ago
    that's a joke, right? I recently rebooted my Linux desktop after 2+ years of uptime because a random opengl app finally crashed kernel display driver. And servers which do just one thing can keep going for years, until power fails or its time to decommission them.
  - seized 4y ago
    > I haven’t had anything since that could go so long between bounces. .... Really? Ignoring the "nothing should have that uptime due to security patches" best practice, almost everything should be able to do that barring power or hardware failure. My OpenIndiana NAS has done >1 year uptime two or three times now. My OpnSense firewall did once (too much road warrioring for a period) but could do it easily again. Linux VMs have done that many times for me when I've been lazy on patching or too busy My ESXi hosts do that too. Thats just my basement homelab, nothing special. I installed a cluster of Windows 2003 servers in a customer site a looong time ago that did over 1000 days uptime (no internet access/customer didn't patch/etc). I even had a Windows XP laptop in my garage 10+ years ago that did nothing but Chrome and RDP client go over 400 days before I tripped on the power cord. Yes, systems should be patched and all that. But really, anything not forcing updates should be able to do a year.
    - bruce511 4y ago
      I agree that current systems should have no problem running for years between reboots, but which for verious reasons would not be a good idea now. (conversely my current desktop boots so fast that I now shut it down every day. Saves a bit of power, and a clean start to each day feels good.) But it's important to understand that back in the 90s running a machine for long periods was unusual. 18 months is certainly notable. Of course there were no security patches back then (and largely no need for them because the always-on Internet wouldn't happen for another few years.) It's hard to understate just how unreliable tech was in the 20th century. Cars broke down a lot. Computers needed rebooting all the time. The risks taken during Mercury, Gemini and Apollo would be considered completely reckless now. It has ever been thus. In the first world war more pilots died from mechanical failure than from enemy fire. First we make it. Then we make it fast. Then we make it reliable.
nradov 4y ago
NetWare was reliable as long as you used high quality hardware and didn't run any third-party applications on the server. It didn't support real memory protection or preemptive multitasking so if you tried to run a database or email application on the NetWare server itself then it got shaky. But the core file and printer sharing features were fast and rock solid.

torh 4y ago

I remember Novells NDS (directory service) to be miles head of Microsoft AD back in Windows 2000, and even many years after. But AD was included "for free" in Windows, and the rest is history...

mc32 4y ago
Apparently there were places that Leo mete are around for printer server services as it apparently handles printer queues better, so they said.
- Scramblejams 4y ago
  Having trouble parsing this. Can you please restate?
  - mc32 4y ago
    Autocorrection mangled it. Some places kept them around as print servers… (after NT displaced them as directory servers)
Neil44 4y ago
It’s hard to beat free. And of course MS is now trying to kill on prem AD in favour of subscription based AAD.
lproven 4y ago
> But AD was included "for free" in Windows, and the rest is history... I don't think that's a valid point. NDS was included for free in all versions of Netware from 4.0 onwards. The Windows client for Netware was free, and Netware came with the Windows management tools and so on. I upgraded one company's network with a fleet of new workstations in about 1999. A few previous consultants told them it was impossible because they'd lost the installation media for the network client. Back then, it was new, but they didn't know you could just... download the client from Novell's website. So I did, and switched out a fleet of 16-bit Windows boxes for NT 4 clients and the official Novell client. No CD drives: just bootstrap NT install with a DOS floppy, fetch the installation files from the server. Saved enough cost to pay for a few extra workstations. It wasn't about price. The 2 killer factors of NT 4 Server displacing Netware 4 were: * Ease of use: you didn't need to know what you were doing with NT. It's Windows. Click around, click "Next" and "OK" enough, you can get it going. * Netware servers were effectively dedicated to file and print. There were a few server apps but many of them destroyed Netware's famed stability. NT 4 Server is just Windows and you can run anything you like on the server, while it's still being a server.

mav88 4y ago

>Novell's legacy is just "that company in the SCO vs. Novell lawsuit" That was Caldera in all but name. The Novell people became Tarantella.

bitwize 4y ago
Wrong side. SCO was acquired by Caldera and became new!SCO. The original SCO people became Tarantella.
- mav88 4y ago
  Disturbing. I think I'm becoming dyslexic. You're quite right.