Manage NetWare

Today, most organizations have heterogeneous networks running a multitude of OSs. If your organization is using NetWare and Linux, then this article can help you interconnect them better. Our objective here is to access and manage a NetWare server from a Linux machine, something of use for network administrators. 

We've used ConsoleOne for this, which has been shipping with NetWare for ages, and now it's available for other platforms as well, with Linux being one of them.

Prepare the system

ConsoleOne is a product from Novell that can manage a NetWare server from Linux. You can download it from http://download.novell.com, for which you'll have to register at the website. The file name is c1_136_linux.tgz, and since the software is not distributable, you'll have to download it yourself. 

Before you install ConsoleOne, check whether IBM Java runtime is installed on your machine. If not, then download it from
http://public.planetmirror. com/pub/java-ibm/1.3.0/linux/. 

Here, you'll find both an rpm as well as a tar file, so download the one that suits you. Install the Java runtime on your Linux machine as follows, if you've downloaded the rpm # rpm -ivh IBMJava2-JRE-1.3-13.0.i386.rpm. 

Install ConsoleOne

To install ConsoleOne on your Linux machine, copy the c1_136_linux.tgz file to the \root folder of your Linux machine. Then open a terminal window from Gnome or KDE desktop and execute the following command:

# tar -zxvf c1_136_linux.tgz 

#cd ConsoleOne

#./c1_install 

You can view and manage all NetWare objects from Linux using ConsoleOne

During installation you will get a text-based menu, where you need to select the language, select 'English' and then you will be asked to select the Snap-in for ConsoleOne (ICE Snap-in, Index Manage Snap-in, LDAP Snap-in, SLP Snap-in, PKI Snap-in, and Filtered Replica Snap-in). These 'Snap-ins' are used to manage the advance features of the NetWare server. Select the Snap-in that you're using from the list. Then within a few seconds ConsoleOne will get installed on your Linux machine.

Run ConsoleOne

After installation, your machine is ready to manage NetWare servers. To execute ConsoleOne, open a terminal in Gnome or KDE and fire the command: 

/usr/ConsoleOne/bin/ConsoleOne

When you run the Netwhere client, you get a login screen similar to the NetWare client for Windows

This will open a Java-based ConsoleOne interface, showing you the NDS tree. To connect to the NetWare NDS tree, select the NDS Tree, and from the File menu select Authentication. It will bring a login screen, where you have to give the administrative Username and Password, along with the tree name and context that you want to use, to log in. Finally you will get an interface, showing you all the manageable objects on your NetWare server. From here, you can create new users, and groups on the NetWare server. You might find errors while executing a few objects. In this case, you have to obtain the appropriate Snap-in for
Linux. 

Access NetWare from Linux

While you can use ConsoleOne from Linux to manage the Linux server, there would als be times, when you need to log in as a user into NetWare. For this also, there's a client available for Linux, called Netwhere. Normally when you want to log in to a NetWare server from Linux, you need to mount NetWare's shared volumes by issuing several commands from the terminal window. This can be quite cumbersome, even for the system administrator. That's why the Netwhere client can be a boon even for them. It's like the Windows client for NetWare, completely GUI based, which automatically logs the user into the NetWare server. You can download Netwhere from http://nwcunix.sourceforge.net. It's a file called netwhere.tar.gz, copy it to the /root on your Linux machine. We used a full install of PCQLinux 2004 for this. You can install the client as follows:

# cd /root

# tar -zxvf netwhere.tar.gz

# cd /netwhere

# sh install.sh

This installs the software and creates a shortcut icon on your desktop with 'No name'. You can rename it to whatever you want. When you double click on this icon, it opens a GUI interface that resembles the NetWare client for Windows. Just provide your NetWare username, password, and NetWare server name, and it will automatically mount all NetWare shares you have access to. These will appear in
\root\novell.

Sanjay Majumder