HP CIFS provides HP-UX with a distributed file system based
on the Microsoft Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocols. HP
CIFS implements both the server and client components of the CIFS
protocol on HP-UX.
The HP CIFS Server is based on the well-established open-source software
Samba, and provides file and print services to CIFS clients including
Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, and HP-UX machines running HP CIFS Client
software.
The HP CIFS Client enables HP-UX users to mount as UNIX filesystems shares
from CIFS file servers including Windows servers and HP-UX machines
running HP CIFS Server. The HP CIFS client also offers an optional
Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) that implements the Windows NT
Lan Manager (NTLM) authentication protocols. When installed and
configured within HP-UX’s PAM facility, PAM NTLM allows
HP-UX users to be authenticated against a Windows authentication
server.
What
is the CIFS Protocol? |
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CIFS had its beginnings in the networking protocols, sometimes
called Server Message Block (SMB) protocols, that were developed
in the late 1980 for PCs to share files over the then nascent Local
Area Network technologies (for example, Ethernet). SMB is the native
file-sharing protocol in the Microsoft Windows 95, Windows NT, and
OS/2 operating systems and the standard way that millions of PC
users share files across corporate intranets.
CIFS is simply a renaming of SMB; and CIFS and SMB are the
same. (Microsoft now emphasizes the use of CIFS, although references
to SMB still occur.) CIFS is also widely available on UNIX, VMS(tm),
Macintosh, and other platforms.
CIFS is a remote file access protocol; it provides access
to files on remote systems. It sits on top of and works with the
file systems of its host systems. CIFS defines both a server and
a client: the CIFS client is used to access files on a CIFS server.
HP CIFS uses the CIFS protocol from the HP-UX machines, which enables
directories from HP-UX servers to be mounted on to Windows machines
and vice versa.
The HP-UX PAM subsystem gives system administrators the flexibility of
choosing any authentication service available on the system to perform
authentication. The framework also allows new authentication service
modules to be plugged in and made available without modifying the
applications.
The PAM framework, libpam, consists of
an interface library and multiple authentication service modules.
The authentication service modules are a set of dynamically loadable
objects invoked by the PAM API to provide a particular type of user
authentication.
NT LAN Manager (NTLM) is the protocol by which CIFS clients
are authenticated by CIFS servers. PAM NTLM is a PAM module that implements
the NTLM protocol. It enables users logging in to an HP-UX system
to have access to CIFS-mounted file systems without having to use
the cifslogin command.
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