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Previous Chapter The Andrew II Project: Personal Systems
Kamran Farshchi
Computing Services
December 12, 1992
This document outlines the functional requirements for integrating personal systems into the Andrew II environment. Personal Systems traditionally have been PCs or Macintoshes. These machines can run a rich suite of commercial software products and are heavily used on campus and in industry. Personal systems run stand-alone and offer users enough power and capability to do their tasks. Personal systems that require network access will generally do so for the value added services that the network provides. Personal systems host a variety of operating systems, such as DOS, Windows, and MAC OS. Please refer to Section 3.2, Design Constraints, for the list of supported hardware, operating systems, and software.
The Andrew II environment as a whole will be based on the Open Software Foundation's Distributed Computing Environment. The minimal offerings that the Andrew II environment will provide to the users of personal systems is:
- Mail and BBoard access
- Printing
- Secure network access to other services (ie: Backup)
- Remote filesystem access
- Backup and archiving of personal systems
- Notification services
Currently, about 70 percent of all machines on the campus network are PCs and Macintoshes (roughly 2000 Macintoshes and 500 PCs).
The purpose of this project is to provide the users of personal systems with an integrated computing environment. The following is a list of categories that are addressed in this document:
- Mail and Bulletin Boards
- Printing Service
- Library access
- Distributed/Network File System Access
- Centralized backup service
- Global authentication and security
- Disconnected Operations (docking) capabilities
- Notification subsystem
- Administrative services
- Centralized/Departmental Administration
- Accounting and usage tracking
- Easy installation of the system
- Extended services
- Remote access via dial up
- Security features
- License Server service
- Batch system for the personal systems
- CD ROM access for the personal systems
- Virus checking mechanism
CDS - Cell Directory Service
DCE - Distributed Computing Environment
DFS - Distributed File System
DME - Distributed Management Environment
Docking - Ability to provide disconnected services
DTS - Distributed Time Service
GDS - Global Directory Service
Kerberos - A public key authentication method from MIT
MAPI - Mail Application Programming Interface
Netware - NOVELL's network operating system
OSF - Open Software Foundation
Roaming - See Docking
RPC - Remote Procedure Call
SEC - DCE Security Services
SMS - Storage Management Services
SPA - Software Publishing Association
VIM - Vendor Independent Messaging
Zephyr - A distributed notification service
The rest of this document is divided into two sections. The first section provides a general description of the personal systems project. The second section explains the requirements for each category. Each item in the requirement list is qualified whether it is Mandatory, Highly Desirable, or Desirable. The goal is to provide all of the Mandatory requirements in the first release of the Andrew II system.
Currently, there is no product on the market that can provide the aforementioned minimal set of services under OSF/DCE. Gradient Technologies is planning to provide the core DCE services to run under Microsoft Windows. DCE core services include, RPC (Remote Procedure Call), the Security Services, DTS (Distributed Time Service), and the directory service. The Gradient Technologies product does not address the file system, mail system, printing, and backup system among others.
The products offered under the Andrew II environment will provide the users with an integrated computing environment for each of the supported platforms. The users will be able to use products effectively from their PCs or Macintoshes.
The products offered by the Andrew II environment will be easy to install and use. All products will use common or similar installation and setup utilities. These products will allow the users of small systems to fully exploit the power of their machines.
The development goal is to use standards when possible. We will use commercial products when possible. In addition, it is desirable to share development work with other universities and companies and to provide the resulting products to a broader audience.
A minimum personal system platform will be defined in order to tailor the provided services to the available hardware. Any machine that does not meet these guidelines can use a subset of the provided services or access the available services remotely (for example: by telneting).
It is desirable to have a minimum set of installed software on the PCs/Macs/UNIX in public computer clusters. This set of tools should be interchangeable between platforms.
All components of the Andrew II environment should conform to the native operating system when possible.
Features described in the Specific Requirements fall into three different categories --- Mandatory, Highly Desirable, and Desirable.
- Features that are mandatory must be included.
- Features that are highly desirable should be included.
- Features that are desirable may be included if they fall within our resource limitations.
It is mandatory that the system:
- provide a MAIL Service for personal systems.
- provide a centralized BBOARD Service.
- have the native look and feel of the platform it is running on. This will be balanced with the need for consistency across mail clients.
- be easy to use.
- provide tolerable access time for operations.
- allow users to set up an address book of commonly used mail addresses.
- support the exchange of attachments/enclosures via mail.
- allow users to print Mail and BBoard messages to the native platform
printers.
- allow the central organization to provide a mail client for PCs and Macintoshes at a minimum charge.
- be able to read mail/bboards remotely over dialups.
- provide authenticated message delivery (trusted originator).
It is highly desirable that the system:
- provide gateways to other mail systems such as MS Mail.
- use commercial products whenever possible, and allow for commercial mail clients to communicate with the Andrew II Mail System using APIs such as MAPI and VIM.
- use standards when possible (such as VIM, MAPI).
It is desirable that the system:
- support multimedia, ie: postscript, rasters, graphics, sound.
- be able to send and receive faxes.
- use a common language for attachments so they can be exchanged with other mailers (for example: MIME).
- allow departments to set up their own mail system.
- remove the inactivity time-out from the mail clients.
- support the user interface of some of the current Andrew mail clients in the Andrew II environment (ie: MacMail II).
- allow central organization to setup/support commercial mail store and gateways for small departments on campus.
It is mandatory that the system:
- allow users of personal systems to print to Andrew II printers.
- provide native look and feel (ie: for PCs printing to LPT port, MACs use Chooser).
- notify the user that the print job is complete, printer is out of paper, problems with the print jobs, etc.
- allow the user to look at queues and delete jobs from the queue.
- allow administrators to set quotas & get usage reports.
- allow administrators to set restrictions and authorization (ie: who can use the printer).
- be able to easily add or remove print queues.
- be able to setup multiple queues for the same printer or to setup multiple printers to serve the same queue.
- allow printer sharing between UNIX, PC, and MACs.
- support both Text & PostScript.
- provide a set of fonts that will be available on all the Andrew II printers.
- be able to move jobs from queue to queue.
It is highly desirable that the system:
- be able to schedule the queues/print request (ie: by job size). If there are restrictions on the size of the job during the day, it should provide alternate queues that can be serviced later.
It is desirable that the system:
- be able to check the job content to see if it is valid for the destination printer and inform the user in real time.
- provide color printing support.
- be able to preview the print job before it is queued.
- allow central organization to maintain a password for the printers.
It is mandatory that the system:
- allow users to access the Mercury Electronic Library using VT100 or X Window and Motif (These are already available).
It is highly desirable that the system:
- provide access to the Mercury Electronic Library to run under the PC DOS
operating system.
- provide access to the Mercury Electronic Library to run under the Macintosh operating system.
- provide access to the Mercury Electronic Library to run under Microsoft
Windows.
It is mandatory that the system:
- provide a native/commercial network file system (ie: NOVELL Netware for DOS, OS/2; Appleshare or Netware for Macintosh for MAC users).
- preserve filesystem semantics when possible.
It is highly desirable that the system:
- provide a gateway to the Andrew II DFS filesystem via NOVELL servers. DFS looks like a Macintosh volume to the MAC users, A Netware volume to DOS users. In addition, evaluate NetATalk from University of Michigan as a candidate for access to DFS for Macintoshes.
- provide tolerable speed and access time to DFS compared with other commercial products (ie: PC-NFS).
It is desirable that the system:
- provide direct access to DFS from PCs and MACs.
- provide central administration for native filesystems (ie: appleshare and novell netware) for campus departments.
- provide central management of userids and protections for the above native filesystems.
It is mandatory that the system:
- allow users to backup the data on their machines to central storage.
- allow users to restore the backed up data from the central storage to their machines.
- provide very secure transport and access to the backup system.
- allow users to setup automatic/unattended backup requests.
- provide accounting, scheduling, and queueing capabilities for administrators.
- be scalable to support the large number of PCs and MACs on the campus (roughly 2000 Macintoshes and 500 PCs on Appletalk, Token Ring, and Ethernet).
It is highly desirable that the system:
- provide job status/progress report to the user.
- allow users to examine what is on backup and queue up automated restore requests for Operations to process.
- keep the new backed up data in a faster storage media for faster and easier access. The older data can be migrated to slower media.
- use commercial products when possible (ARCSERVE from Cheyenne Software runs on NOVELL server and provides a DOS and a MAC agent. Retrospect is similar for Macintosh clients).
It is desirable that the system:
- be based on standards such as SMS.
- allow departments to setup the backup system within their organization and manage it locally.
- not degrade the PC's or MAC's performance.
It is mandatory that the system:
- provide Kerberos 4.0 authentication service for PCs and MACs. Port to OSF/DCE SEC (security services) when available. A port of Kerberos 4.0 for the Macintosh is currently in progress.
- be able to authenticate once and use the available services (mail, printing, backup, etc.) using this credential.
- provide a user friendly interface when possible.
- be secure when used in public clusters (indicate to users that they should logoff before walking away).
- put restrictions on passwords and help users select secure passwords.
It is highly desirable that the system:
- use work done by other universities as a base for development (MIT, Brown universities).
It is desirable that the system:
- provide activity/inactivity time-out for the ticket.
- use the Responder concept for services needing re-authentication (do we prompt for authentication when printing to Andrew II printers?).
- authenticate to multiple DCE/DFS cells (multi-cell).
- provide one unique userid/password system for all systems and services.
It is highly desirable that the system:
- allow users to load their mail to a personal system and manipulate it off-line.
- allow users to load a BBoard to a personal system and process it off-line.
It is desirable that the system:
- provide a queuing mechanism so users can queue up print jobs, backup requests, outgoing mail, and batch jobs while disconnected.
- provide ways of downloading software to personal systems for off-line use (licensing).
- use commercial software when possible for disconnected access. Companies such as NOVELL, Microsoft and Apple are building these capabilities into their operating systems.
- provide accounting and statistics for the provided services.
- provide an automatic way to update and synchronize personal systems with office systems.
It is mandatory that the system:
- provide Zephyr notification service or a similar product compatible with Zephyr for the personal systems.
- be available to users, administrators, and the system services.
- allow users to send each other notification messages.
- allow administrators to send notification messages to all or a selected class of users.
- provide gateway notification service for DOS users to run under NOVELL Netware. The gateway uses the NOVELL's built-in massaging system to communicate with the DOS users.
- provide a port of Zephyr for the Macintoshes (There already is a port).
- provide a user interface with a native look and feel.
- allow users to turn on or off user-class messages.
- not block the processes running on the machine.
It is highly desirable that the system:
- provide a port of Zephyr notification service to run under Microsoft Windows.
It is mandatory that the system:
- provide a consistent client user interface for administrators (The interface should be similar for all provided services, ie: mail, printing, backup, etc.).
It is highly desirable that the system:
- allow departments to manage their users locally.
- allow campus departments to setup these services in their organization and administer it locally.
It is mandatory that the system:
- be able to track and possibly charge for all of the provided services.
It is desirable that the system:
- provide centralized userids for the campus users: 1 unique userid for each user on campus which works with Andrew II services, NOVELL servers, Appleshare services, etc.
It is mandatory that the system:
- be easy to install using an installation tool that works for all subsystems.
It is desirable that the system:
- provide a package- like program for PCs and Macintoshes to automatically install the software and get updates and upgrades at reboot time (licensing issues).
- provide a mechanism to check the integrity of the software on the machine.
It is mandatory that the system:
- require high speed modems.
- provide SLIP (serial Line IP) or PPP (point to point protocol) to the PC and Macintosh users.
It is desirable that the system:
- provide ARAP (appletalk remote) and PPP to the PC and Macintosh users.
It is mandatory that the system:
- not store encrypted network data on media (ie: tape) in encrypted format.
It is desirable that the system:
- provide Authenticated & encrypted network transactions such as encrypted telnet sessions.
It is desirable that the system:
- follow standards such as the one provided by SPA which will be built into applications.
- have commercial software products provide their own license tracking.
- be usable by MACs, PCs & UNIX machine.
It is desirable that the system:
- provide a batch system for the PCs and MACs.
It is desirable that the system:
- be able to provide centralized CD access to users (similar to tape).
It is mandatory that the system:
- provide a virus checking mechanism.
Standards to consider:
OCE - Open Collaborative Environment
WOSA - Windows Open Services Architecture
MAPI - Mail Application Programming Interface
VIM - Vendor Independent Messaging specifications
SMS - Storage Management Services architecture
SPA - Software Publishing Association
Mandatory:
- DOS 3.3 and higher
- Macintosh OS system 6.0.7 and higher
- MS Windows 3.1 and higher
Desirable:
- DesqView
- OS/2 2.0 and higher
- Windows NT
PC or compatible with:
Mandatory:
- Minimum Memory (1M and higher)
- 1 Hard disk or Network disk
- cpu types (80386 and higher)
- Token ring, Ethernet (on the network)
- Network PC/TCP drivers
Desirable:
- High speed modem from home
- pointing device
Macintosh with:
Mandatory:
- Macintosh SE and higher
- 2 MB memory
- 20M Hard drive
- Appletalk or Ethernet (on the network)
- MACTCP 1.1.1 or higher
Desirable:
- High speed modem (from home)
These offerings will be available for testing in the first quarter of 1994.
The provided software should be maintainable. This implies access to sources if customization is needed. The products should be easily configurable via parameters. It should be easy to apply bug fixes and add system enhancements.
The user interfaces should conform to the native operating system that it is provided for. The user interface should be easy to use. The offering should provide a consistent user interface for system operators and administrators.
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