Idea ID: 2783550

Provide a proper cross-platform NCP client for Mac and Linux.

Status: Delivered
Mac users increasingly expect feature parity with Windows users.

I suggest that now is a good time to build an NCP client for the Mac again to include features such as login script processing, salvage etc. This could be easily ported from the current Novell Client for Linux (NCL) and the NCL could be updated to work for a wider range of Linux distributions.

Without this, Microfocus' cross-plaform story is sadly incomplete.
  • NCP is one of the "Crown Jewels" that Microfocus acquired in the Attachmate/Novell merger (along with items like FLAIM, NSS, eDirectory, etc.). It is a sophisticated, proprietary technology that Microfocus controls and can improve at-will. On July 14th at noon, I will give a presentation at the TTP Provo conference (in the Building H conference rooms) entitled "NCP: Now and Forever" making this case. However, for purposes of this "idea" I will limit myself to pointing out that NCP does a lot more than file sharing, and the basis for providing any functionality at all via NCP is to have a set of clients that can intelligently send and receive NCP packets. Having a rich OS X client is necessary to fully utilize NCP as a differentiating technology on the server side, and it can provide a host of functionality to the OS X client. It does not need to necessarily be a full login-and-map drive client, but it does need to provide both a GUI element and command-line utilities. I strongly vote "yes" on this submission.
  • One of the biggest issues is remote use and firewalls. I'd support this more if the proposition included tunneling 524(NCP, 427(SLP) and 636(SLDAP) over HTTPS into the Novell Client.
  • Our Mac base has been increasing steadily over the years too. However, what I would personally benefit from is a fully supported Linux client. Most of the servers I am responsible for run on OES Linux. It makes sense therefore to use a workstation equivalent O/S to manage them. Being able to use JRButils in a Bash environment makes my job a lot easier and has other benefits too.
  • ...and, of course, Kanaka isn't actually a client - it's just a shim that enhances CIFS to workaround the lack of the kind of features we would expect from a proper client. It's still buying into the story that CIFS is good enough.
  • agree 100%. I do see MAC base is increasing and not supported well. Kan-aka engine maintenance need to be avoided or too many issues for an average admin. NCP is the way forward.