Proof of Concept: NFS Attributes Editor We come across a lot of people who have IdMU tools installed even though they don't use the NIS authentication. This, primarily, happens because they have NFS in their environment and with Windows Vista and later, the only way to get identities mapped is by...

Using Kerberos Authentication for Server for NFS It has always been attributed that the NFS communication is inherently insecure and that's completely true. There are certain security options but they aren't enough to protect the data from unauthorized access. Fortunately, the NFS architecture is...

Managing Client Groups - An Easier Approach On UNIX-based NFS servers, it's much easier to control access to the NFS shares based on host names or IP addresses. You just have to put them in the export file and it's done. It's not so difficult in Windows either - you can click on the Permission buttons...

Getting AD Lookup to work without UNIX Attributes tab The previous post talks about how to get the UNIX Attributes tab to work without installing IdMU components. In this post, I would like to talk about what attributes the NFS components expect to be populated in AD for user and group object before...

AD Lookup with ADAM/ADLDS With removal of UNM in Vista/W2K8, it became really problematic to map users in non-AD environments to use with Vista/LH NFS Servers and Clients. For client, a workaround was discovered which was essentially a registry tweak and did allow more than user to be able to access...

Limitation with Active Directory Lookup feature in Microsoft Services for NFS The Active Directory Lookup feature that was introduced with Windows Server 2003 R2. This feature greatly simplifies the UNIX identity information management but has its own set of limitation. I thoughy I'll document them...

Set up Services for Network File System in Windows Server 2008 The Microsoft Services for NFS continues to be the part of the operating system in Windows Server 2008 and seems we will see more improvements when Windows Server 2008 R2 is released. In Windows Server 2008, a major change from the...

How User Name Mapping works? User Name Mapping is the core NFS authentication component in Services for UNIX, Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Vista. It bridges the gap presented by difference in user identification methods used by Windows and UNIX systems. It plays equally important role for Server...

Set up Server for NFS in Windows Server 2003 R2 In this post, I will talk about configuring Microsoft Services for Network File System, mainly Server for NFS and User Name Mapping , in Windows Server 2003 R2. You can follow the same steps for Services for UNIX (SFU) 3.5 except only a few of them because...

Using chown/chgrp from UNIX clients Why it is still owned by 4294967294? Haven’t I mapped root user to Administrator user? Well, you might recall – in Windows world a file or directory can be owned by a user or a group. Since default owner happens to be the Administrators group, you can see this...

Who's 4294967294? Why is /mnt/nfs owned by something like 4294967294 and why is the group set to the same? Why there are no permissions for anyone except the owner on the nfs directory? I am root on the Linux client so why is myfile owned (again) by 4294967294? Well, first of all, remember we have...

Mounting NFS share on NFS client Now click on OK twice and come out of the folder properties saving the changes you've made, open a command prompt and run – showmount –e. This should return the exports list for this system and should list the folder you just shared – Next step is to check the...

Sharing folders over NFS It’s easy – right click on the folder you to share and go to properties on this folder. You should now be able see a new tab called “ NFS Sharing ”. Here’s how it looks like – Remember that we have not yet set up User Name Mapping so Server for NFS will treat all access...

Introduction and installation of Services for NFS on R2 Following is what makes up Microsoft Services for Network File System under Other Network File and Print Services in your familiar Add/Remove Windows component Wizard – Client for NFS enables Windows clients can access the data shared...

GID on NTFS File System Can you set group on a file or folder on NTFS file system? - No, ugh... Yes. This question puzzled me for a long time but since it never really made it to my top priorities, I didn't look up for information on this. I thought of exploring this area more while I was researching...

Active Directory Lookup? Or, User Name Mapping? Or Both? User Name Mapping in Windows Server 2003 R2 and Services for UNIX allows you map UNIX user and group accounts to their Windows counterparts (both local and domain accounts). This service is used by Server for NFS and Client for NFS (also by...