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Date:      Wed, 13 May 1998 09:35:36 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Bill Paul <wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu>
To:        roberte@MEP.Ruhr-Uni-Bochum.de (Robert Eckardt)
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: NISplus, SecureRPC
Message-ID:  <199805131335.JAA04205@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu>
In-Reply-To: <199805122132.XAA00791@ghost.mep.ruhr-uni-bochum.de> from "Robert Eckardt" at May 12, 98 11:32:09 pm

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Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Robert Eckardt 
had to walk into mine and say:

> Hi,
> 
> since searching in the mail archives revealed nothing new, I try asking
> on this forum whether someone is (still) working on implementing NIS+
> (at least the client part) on FreeBSD and if so what is the status ?
> 
> It seems that Linux has support for NIS+ clients. Is this usable
> from FreeBSD ?

If you are asking: can I use the Linux NIS+ code with FreeBSD, the
answer is no. First, the code needs to be ported. Second, you also need 
some kind of name service switch to use it, which FreeBSD doesn't have.

If you are asking: does FreeBSD have any NIS+ support itself, the answer 
is no, not yet

Yes, I am still working on NIS+ support for FreeBSD-current, however I've 
been sidetracked by other things recently (like writing a device driver 
and real work, and, oh, little inconsequential things like sleep).
 
> Is the SecureRPC implementation complete and available to Non-US-citizens ?

For the Nth time: Secure RPC itself is not subject to export restrictions.
Secure RPC does not, in itself, contain any crypto code and only performs
authentication operations, not data encryption. If you've downloaded and
installed a FreeBSD-current snapshot, then you already have Secure RPC.

The only complication is that in order to use it to interoperate with
other systems, you have to install the DES distribution in order to
get libdes.so. If you do this, then Secure RPC will work just fine.
If you don't, it will still work, but it will only use 40-bit RC4
encrtyption which other systems using DES won't be able to understand.
 
> The reason I ask is simply that I would like to add a FreeBSD-driven PC in
> a NIS+-administered network.

Be patient. If I'm really lucky, I just might be able to get the code
imported in time for FreeBSD 3.0. _However_ we don't have a mechanism
in place yet to do the work of a name service switch, so while you'll
probably be able to use FreeBSD 3.0 as an NIS+ server, it may not work
as a client. Now that BIND 8 has been imported there may be more of a
chance to have it work since libbind contains IRS, which works much like
the name service switch, however it hasn't yet been merged into libc
from what I can tell.

-Bill

-- 
=============================================================================
-Bill Paul            (212) 854-6020 | System Manager, Master of Unix-Fu
Work:         wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu | Center for Telecommunications Research
Home:  wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu | Columbia University, New York City
=============================================================================
 "It is not I who am crazy; it is I who am mad!" - Ren Hoek, "Space Madness"
=============================================================================

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