Windows Services for UNIX (SFU) is a discontinued software package produced by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

which provided a

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...

environment on

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Win ...

and some of its immediate successor operating-systems. SFU 1.0 and 2.0 used the

MKS Toolkit MKS Toolkit is a software package produced and maintained by PTC that provides a Unix-like environment for scripting, connectivity and porting Unix and Linux software to Microsoft Windows. It was originally created for MS-DOS, and OS/2 versi ...

; starting with SFU 3.0, SFU included the

Interix Interix was an optional, POSIX-conformant Unix subsystem for Windows NT operating systems. Interix was a component of Windows Services for UNIX, and a superset of the Microsoft POSIX subsystem. Like the POSIX subsystem, Interix was an environment ...

subsystem, which was acquired by Microsoft in 1999 from US-based Softway Systems as part of an asset acquisition. SFU 3.5 was the last release and was available as a free download from Microsoft.

Windows Server 2003 R2 Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April ...

included most of the former SFU components (on Disk 2), naming the Interix subsystem component Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications (SUA). In

Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 is the fourth release of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of the operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and generally to retail on F ...

and high-end versions of both

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

and

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

(Enterprise and Ultimate), a minimal Interix SUA was included, but most of the other SFU utilities had to be downloaded separately from Microsoft's web site. The Interix subsystem included in SFU 3.0 and 3.5 and later released as SUA Windows components provided header files and libraries that made it easier to recompile or port Unix applications for use on Windows; they did not make Linux or other Unix binaries ( BSD, Solaris,

Xenix Xenix is a discontinued version of the Unix operating system for various microcomputer platforms, licensed by Microsoft from AT&T Corporation in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) later acquired exclusive rights to the software, ...

etc) compatible with Windows binaries. Like the

Microsoft POSIX subsystem Microsoft POSIX subsystem is one of four subsystems shipped with the first versions of Windows NT, the other three being the Win32 subsystem which provided the primary API for Windows NT, plus the OS/2 and security subsystems. This subsystem ...

that Interix replaced, it is best thought of as a distinct

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

platform. It is replaced by Windows Subsystem for Linux in

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on ...

and

Windows Server 2019 Windows Server 2019 is the ninth version of the Windows Server operating system by Microsoft, as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It is the second version of the server operating system based on the Windows 10 platform, ...

Components

As of SFU 3.5, it contained: * Over 350

utilities such as vi, ksh, csh, ls,

cat The cat (''Felis catus'') is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from the wild members of ...

, awk,

grep grep is a command-line utility for searching plain-text data sets for lines that match a regular expression. Its name comes from the ed command ''g/re/p'' (''globally search for a regular expression and print matching lines''), which has the sa ...

kill Kill often refers to: *Homicide, one human killing another *cause death, to kill a living organism, to cause its death Kill may also refer to: Media *'' Kill!'', a 1968 film directed by Kihachi Okamoto * ''Kill'' (Cannibal Corpse album), 2006 * ...

, etc. * GCC 3.3 compiler, includes and libraries (through an MS libc) * A cc-like wrapper for

Microsoft Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such ...

command-line C/C++ compiler * GDB debugger *

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...

* NFS server and client * A pcnfsd daemon *

X11 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...

tools and libraries * Tools for making NFS mount-points appear as Windows shares, and vice versa (''gateway'' services) * A NIS server capability linked with Active Directory (AD) * Some Windows/Unix authentication information-synchronization tools SFU did not contain the following: *

bash Bash or BASH may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Bash!'' (Rockapella album), 1992 * ''Bash!'' (Dave Bailey album), 1961 * '' Bash: Latter-Day Plays'', a dramatic triptych * ''BASH!'' (role-playing game), a 2005 superhero game * "Bash" ('' ...

OpenSSH OpenSSH (also known as OpenBSD Secure Shell) is a suite of secure networking utilities based on the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol, which provides a secure channel over an unsecured network in a client–server architecture. Network Working Gro ...

sudo sudo ( or ) is a program for Unix-like computer operating systems that enables users to run programs with the security privileges of another user, by default the superuser. It originally stood for "superuser do", as that was all it did, and it ...

, CVS,

ClamAV Clam AntiVirus (ClamAV) is a free software, cross-platform antimalware toolkit able to detect many types of malware, including viruses. It was developed for Unix and has third party versions available for AIX, BSD, HP-UX, Linux, macOS, Op ...

, bzip2, gmake,

curl cURL (pronounced like "curl", UK: , US: ) is a computer software project providing a library (libcurl) and command-line tool (curl) for transferring data using various network protocols. The name stands for "Client URL". History cURL was ...

emacs Emacs , originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor MACroS"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, ...

Apache The Apache () are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, which include the Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Mimbreño, Ndendahe (Bedonkohe or Mogollon and Nednhi or Carrizaleño a ...

, XView,

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called ...

, Tcl, Python Although SFU includes

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...

client libraries and applications, it does not contain a native X server. Administrators may configure any of the numerous third-party Windows X servers. Fully featured free options include

Cygwin/X Cygwin/X is an implementation of the X Window System that runs under Microsoft Windows. It is part of the Cygwin project, and is installed using Cygwin's standard setup system. Cygwin/X is free software, licensed under the X11 License. Cygwin/ ...

, Xming and WeirdX.

Releases

1.0

Microsoft produced at least one beta release of the initial version of SFU before its final release in February 1999. This release, in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

only, was supported on the

Windows NT 4.0 Windows NT 4.0 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 3.51, which was released to manufacturing on July 31, 1996, and then to retail ...

SP3+ for x86 and

Alpha Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἄλφα, ''álpha'', or ell, άλφα, álfa) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph , whi ...

platforms. This is the only known release to support Alpha. It included a demonstration version of the

along with the following components: *

Telnet Telnet is an application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet control i ...

server * Telnet client * UNIX Utilities (from MKS) * Client for NFS * Server for NFS * Server for NFS Authentication * Windows NT to UNIX password-synchronization * Help files and documentation

2.0

This second installment of SFU was released April 2000 and was also for English; however, a

Japanese-language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ma ...

release appeared just two months later in June 2000. Both ran on Windows NT 4.0 SP4+ and

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was offici ...

on x86 platforms with

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems (in ...

4.01+. SFU 2.0 supported the following UNIX versions: Solaris 2.6+,

HP-UX HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is Hewlett Packard Enterprise's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on Unix System V (initially System III) and first released in 1984. Current versions support HPE Integrity Se ...

10.2+,

AIX Aix or AIX may refer to: Computing * AIX, a line of IBM computer operating systems *An Alternate Index, for a Virtual Storage Access Method Key Sequenced Data Set * Athens Internet Exchange, a European Internet exchange point Places Belgiu ...

4.2+,

Tru64 UNIX Tru64 UNIX is a discontinued 64-bit UNIX operating system for the Alpha instruction set architecture (ISA), currently owned by Hewlett-Packard (HP). Previously, Tru64 UNIX was a product of Compaq, and before that, Digital Equipment Corporation (DE ...

5.0+, and

Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux was a widely used commercial open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004. Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. Red Hat published the first non-beta releas ...

5.1+. It included the following components: * Server for NFS (NFSServer) * Client for NFS (NFSClient) * Gateway for NFS (NFSGateway) * Server for PCNFS (Pcnfsd) * User Name Mapping (Mapsvc) * Server for NFS Authentication (NFSServerAuth) * Server for NIS (NIS) *

Client (TelnetClient) * Telnet server (TelnetServer) * Password synchronization (PasswdSync) * ActiveState ActivePerl (Perl) * UNIX utilities (UnixUtilities) *

Cron The cron command-line utility is a job scheduler on Unix-like operating systems. Users who set up and maintain software environments use cron to schedule jobs (commands or shell scripts), also known as cron jobs, to run periodically at fixed t ...

service (CronSvc) * Rsh service (RshSvc) There were subsequent updated OEM releases SFU 2.1, SFU 2.2, and SFU 2.3.

3.0

This version, released in May 2002, was the first release to include the

subsystem. Previously Microsoft had released Interix 2.2 (actually version 2.2.5) as a separate product around the same time frame as SFU 2.0. This SFU release included Interix release 3.0 (commonly called the "version" as reported by uname -r) with an internal Microsoft version of 7.0 that relates to internal build sequences. This Interix release contained significant technical extensions from the Interix 2.2 release such as a rooted file system and setuid functionality that were entirely based on the Softway Systems'

development codenamed "Firebrand". This was also released in English and followed by a later release in Japanese in October 2002, adding

internationalization In economics, internationalization or internationalisation is the process of increasing involvement of enterprises in international markets, although there is no agreed definition of internationalization. Internationalization is a crucial strateg ...

support. Both supported Windows NT 4.0 SP6a+, Windows 2000, and

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...

Professional on x86 platforms with Internet Explorer 5.0+. The MKS Toolkit was no longer included. It included the following components: * Base Utilities for Interix (BaseUtils; including X11R5 utilities) * UNIX Perl for Interix (UNIXPerl) * Interix SDK (InterixSDK; including headers and libraries for development and a wrapper for

Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including web site, websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platfor ...

compiler) * GNU Utilities for Interix (GNUUtils, about 9 utilities in total) * GNU SDK for Interix (GNUSDK; including gcc and g++) * NFS Client for Windows (NFSClient) * NFS Gateway for Windows (NFSGateway) * NFS Server for Windows (NFSServer) * NIS Server for Windows (NIS) * Password Synchronization (PasswdSync) * Windows Remote Shell Service (RshSvc) * Telnet Server for Windows (TelnetServer) * NFS User Name Mapping (Mapsvc) * NFS Authentication Server (NFSServerAuth) * PCNFS Server (Pcnfsd) * ActiveState Perl (Perl)

3.5

This was the final release of SFU and the only release to be distributed free of charge. It was released January 2004 and included both English and Japanese versions for Windows 2000, Windows XP Professional, and

Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2 ...

(original release only) on x86 platforms with Internet Explorer 5.0+. It included Interix subsystem release 3.5 (build version 8.0) adding internationalization support (at least for the English version which did not have such until now) and POSIX threading. This release could only be installed to an

NTFS New Technology File System (NTFS) is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft. Starting with Windows NT 3.1, it is the default file system of the Windows NT family. It superseded File Allocation Table (FAT) as the preferred fil ...

file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...

(earlier versions supported FAT; this was for improved file-security requirements in Interix 3.5). The following UNIX versions were supported for NFS components: Solaris 7 and 8, Red Hat Linux 8.0, AIX 5L 5.2, and HP-UX 11i. It included the following components: * Base Utilities for Interix (BaseUtils; including X11R6 and X11R5 utilities) * UNIX Perl for Interix (UNIXPerl) * Interix SDK (InterixSDK; including headers and libraries for development and a wrapper for Visual Studio compiler) * GNU Utilities for Interix (GNUUtils, again about 9 utilities) * GNU SDK for Interix (GNUSDK; including gcc and g++) * NFS Client for Windows (NFSClient) * NFS Gateway for Windows (NFSGateway) * NFS Server for Windows (NFSServer) * NIS Server for Windows (NIS) * Password synchronization (PasswdSync) * Windows Remote Shell Service (RshSvc) * Telnet Server for Windows (TelnetServer) * NFS User Name Mapping (Mapsvc) * NFS Authentication Server (NFSServerAuth) * PCNFS server (Pcnfsd) * ActiveState Perl (Perl) Microsoft does not intend to produce any further standalone versions of SFU, opting instead for the integrated SUA. As of August 18, 2016, v3.5 is unavailable from the provided Microsoft Link. General support continued until 2011; extended support until 2014.

Known problems

Character translation must be used to accommodate filenames which include a colon (:) or other characters that do not comply with the naming conventions of Windows file-systems. Files with the same name but different cases are also not allowed by default, but can be enabled on installation with the side-effect of making the underlying partition's filesystem case-sensitive, even for the Win32 subsystem. Network authentication for UNIX systems relies on the insecure NIS protocol (LDAP- and Kerberos-based authentication require a third-party solution). Microsoft has released several hotfixes for Windows Services for UNIX, and at least one Security Update (KB939778). The

GNU Project The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collabor ...

utilities are several versions older than the latest ones. A separate port of the up-to-date

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

utilities was started in 2007, but apparently abandoned in 2009. Several of the text processing utilities in SUA (e.g. awk) are not compatible with

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

wide character A wide character is a computer character datatype that generally has a size greater than the traditional 8-bit character. The increased datatype size allows for the use of larger coded character sets. History During the 1960s, mainframe and m ...

text files. No version of Windows Services for UNIX is available for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

Legacy

contains most SFU components, namely Microsoft Services for Network File System (NFS), Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications (SUA, a.k.a.

), and Identity Management for UNIX. The July 2007 SFU 3.5 Security Update updated posix.exe and related files to match the SUA version. Unlike the SFU, the SUA version included in Windows Server 2003 R2 (and subsequent versions) has 64-bit support and allows linking of Win32 libraries to SUA applications.

and

Enterprise and Ultimate Editions also contain the Services for Unix components, now called the Subsystem for UNIX-based applications (SUA), and Client for NFS v3. Users must download the utilities and SDK separately. However, the server components from the SFU product line (namely Server for NFS, User Name Mapping, Server for NIS, Password Synchronization etc.) are not included – these are included in Server editions of Windows (i.e. Windows Server 2008). SUA was deprecated in Windows 8 Enterprise and Windows Server 2012, and completely removed in Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2. The NFS server is still supported in Windows Server 2012 R2. The NFS client feature and server features are separate from the SUA in Windows 7 and 2008, and remained supported until Windows Subsystem for Linux replaced it. On desktop (Windows 7), NFS is only available in the Enterprise and Ultimate editions. The free reference implementation of NFS 4.1 for Windows (by UMICH CITI), the development of which was sponsored by Microsoft, does work on lower-end versions of Windows 7, but requires more involved installation. In

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to ...

, the NFS client gained krb5p (

Kerberos 5 Kerberos () is a computer network, computer-network authentication cryptographic protocol, protocol that works on the basis of ''tickets'' to allow Node (networking), nodes communicating over a non-secure network to prove their identity to one an ...

with full data encryption) support. In Windows 7, Kerberos 5 was supported for authentication, but only packet integrity checking was available for data. The maximum block/buffer size was also increased from 32 KB to 1 MB in Windows 8. Windows Server 2012 added support for NFS 4.1 server. The new implementation is kernel-based (RPC/XDR-wise) but many optional features from NFS4 are not implemented, including ACLs, pNFS etc. There is however support in

PowerShell PowerShell is a task automation and configuration management program from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and the associated scripting language. Initially a Windows component only, known as Windows PowerShell, it was made open-sou ...

for mapping user identities.

Notes

References

External links

Microsoft TechNet: Windows Services for UNIX

Services for UNIX: Blog
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Windows Services For Unix Windows components Unix emulators