GOC

Likewise Software has released a new open source software application designed to help administrators remotely and uniformly manage all network computers, regardless of operating systems being used (Linux, UNIX, Mac, etc.), from a central interface.

 

Administrators can now manage users, computers and access rights from any Linux, UNIX or Mac OS X-based machine using Likewise Administrative Console. Built on the .NET (News - Alert) platform with a pluggable extension model, LAC is a graphical management console. It currently ships with several extensions including a users’ and groups manager, an event log viewer and an Active Directory editor.

 

Offering Active Directory Authentication services for all non-Windows systems, Likewise Identity Services (LWIS) comes across as a next generation Active Directory authentication engine that runs on 118+ non-Windows platforms including Linux/Unix/Mac. The Likewise architecture comes with a full implementation of the DCE/RPC framework with support for Kerberos, NTLM and SPNEGO security protocols and provides a programmable, Windows distributed-systems platform on non-Windows systems.

 

The Likewise event log daemon stores authentication and security events on a local embedded database engine. With this, the IT staff can see and troubleshoot events on more than 118 supported platforms. They can do it in a common unified format that integrates seamlessly in a heterogeneous environment. This full-fledged event log subsystem leverages the LWIS architecture and is an analogue of the Windows event log subsystem. Events are stored as structured data allowing for easier interpretation.

 

Likewise Open Fall 08 will be available for download in August at www.likewisewoftware.com. It will be dual licensed under the Limited GPL 2.1 for client libraries and the GPL 2.1 for daemons and it will also be available for OEMs, VARs and other entities who can license LWIS under a proprietary license.

 

“Likewise Open continues to evolve into an extremely valuable tool thanks to the contributions of an engaged open source community," said Barry Crist, chief executive officer of Likewise Software, in a statement. "Our latest version features a next generation authentication engine that makes the administration of mixed networks even easier by allowing IT to manage users, access rights and policies from any computer. We have seen tremendous growth in the number of users and supporters of Likewise Open as the agent is quickly becoming the de facto standard for secure authentication in mixed network environments.”