Installation guide

6.9 Distributed Services Programming Software
This section discusses the following distributed services programming
facilities:
• Remote procedure calling (RPC)
• Kerberos authentication service
• Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) service
• Network Information Service (NIS, formerly YP)
• Hesiod naming service
6.9.1 Remote Procedure Calling
The ULTRIX system provides a general RPC mechanism, DEC RPC
Version 1.0, which is based on and is compatible with the RPC component
of the Hewlett-Packard/Apollo Network Computing System (NCS),
Version 1.5. DIGITAL UNIX systems do not provide a development or
run-time environment for DEC RPC Version 1.0. Specifically, the DEC RPC
Version 1.0 components, which include the Network Interface Definition
Language (NIDL) compiler, the Location Brokers (Local Location Broker
and Global Location Broker), and the RPC run-time library, are unavailable.
DIGITAL UNIX and ULTRIX systems both provide the capabilities to
interoperate with the Sun Microsystems ONC (Open Network Computing
environment). DIGITAL UNIX systems also enable ONC RPC application
development by providing a high-level set of operations that can be used to
execute procedures on remote systems across a network. See the
Programming with ONC RPC manual for more information on using ONC
RPC.
As part of the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE), OSF has defined
an RPC mechanism that integrates with the other DCE components (for
example, Cell Directory Service and Global Naming − X.500). Components
to support this mechanism are not part of the base DIGITAL UNIX
product. See the DIGITAL DCE Starter Kit for these features.
6.9.2 Network Authentication
Kerberos is an authentication service that validates the identity of a user
or service, preventing fraudulent requests. It provides a programming
interface for authentication by applications communicating across a TCP/IP
network with a socket interface. The ULTRIX system supports a version of
Kerberos that is derived from MIT/Athena’s Kerberos Version 4. No
Kerberos programming interfaces are available on the DIGITAL UNIX
system. Many binaries that were built with Kerberos on an ULTRIX
6–18 Overview of the DIGITAL UNIX Programming Environment