NetWare file and print services

As mentioned earlier in this tutorial, NetWare has long been regarded as the king of file and print services, and indeed, for many years, it was the operating system of choice for this purpose. Although that might no longer be the case, many people in the IT industry still see NetWare as primarily a file and print server platform.

Of all the network operating systems discussed in this chapter, NetWare has by far the most comprehensive (and complex) file system security structure. In addition to allowing an administrator to assign a comprehensive set of rights to users and groups, NetWare provides file permission inheritance systems, as well as the ability to block the inherited rights if needed. All this adds up to a sophisticated file system security method that can take some getting used to.

In addition to file permission rights, files can also be assigned a range of attributes. These attributes work the same as file attributes in DOS and Windows, except that the Windows file permissions are limited to attributes such as read-only and hidden, whereas the NetWare file attributes include such possibilities as rename inhibit and copy inhibit.

Printing with NetWare can be implemented in a variety of ways. Traditionally, printers were defined on the server, and print queues were associated with those printers. In NetWare 6, a feature called Novell Distributed Print Services allows a more dynamic printing environment to be created, with increased functionality. NetWare 6 also includes a new feature called iPrint, which allows users to see graphical maps of the network and point and click to access network devices.

To access a printer on NetWare, clients capture the output that would normally be directed to a local printer port and send it to the network printer. In early versions of NetWare, this was a process performed by using a command- line utility, called capture. Nowadays, the process has been hidden behind the graphical interface of the client software and is largely unnoticed.