Likewise Fall 08 works with Mac OS X, Linux, Unix systems
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Jul 31, 2008 at 10:13am
A new version of Likewise Fall 08, a free, open source software application from Likewise Software enables administrators to remotely and uniformly manage all network computers, regardless of their operating systems, from a single point of control from virtually any computer.
Likewise Fall 08, which supports more than 118 platforms. Building on the success of the current version, this new edition includes features that further streamline the process of integrating Mac, Linux and Unix systems into a Microsoft Active Directory environment:
Likewise Identity Services (LWIS) provides Active Directory Authentication services for all non-Windows systems. LWIS is a next generation Active Directory authentication engine. It’s the cornerstone of the Likewise architecture that provides a programmable, Windows distributed-systems platform on non-Windows systems and comes with a full implementation of the DCE/RPC framework with support for Kerberos, NTLM and SPNEGO security protocols.
The Likewise Administrative Console (LAC) allows administrators to manage users, computers and access rights from a Mac OS X, Linux or Unix-based machine. LAC is a graphical management console built on the .NET platform with a pluggable extension model. It currently ships with several extensions including an Active Directory editor, a users and groups manager, and an event log viewer.
LAC runs natively on any flavor of Linux that runs a graphical desktop including Fedora, RedHat, SuSe Linux Desktop and SuSe Linux Enterprise, Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Server and all flavors of Mac OS X and Windows. It also includes a Plug-in Software Development Kit that allows third-party ISVs to write their own custom plug-ins.
The Likewise event log daemon is a new event logging component that stores authentication and security events on a local embedded database engine. This enables IT staff to view and troubleshoot events on more than 118 supported platforms, in a common, unified format that integrates in a heterogeneous environment. This full-fledged event log subsystem is an analogue of the Windows event log subsystem and leverages the LWIS architecture.
Likewise Open Fall 08 will be available for download next month. Likewise Identity Services (LWIS) will be dual licensed as follows: under the Limited GPL 2.1 for client libraries and the GPL 2.1 for daemons.
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
