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, Washin ...

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, an ...

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; 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 24, 2 ...

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 released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

(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, and ...

etc) compatible with Windows binaries. Like the Microsoft POSIX 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 Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

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 J ...

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, after ...

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 AWK (''awk'') is a domain-specific language designed for text processing and typically used as a data extraction and reporting tool. Like sed and grep, it is a filter, and is a standard feature of most Unix-like operating systems. The AWK lang ...

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 command-line C/C++ compiler *

GDB The GNU Debugger (GDB) is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, C, C++, Objective-C, Free Pascal, Fortran, Go, and partially others. History GDB was first written by ...

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 Nis, Niš, NiS or NIS may refer to: Places * Niš, a city in Serbia * Nis, Iran, a village * Ness, Lewis ( gd, Nis, links=no), a village in the Outer Hebrides islands Businesses and organizations * Naftna Industrija Srbije, Petroleum Industry o ...

server capability linked with Active Directory (AD) * Some Windows/Unix authentication information-synchronization tools SFU did not contain the following: * 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, 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, OpenVM ...

, bzip2, gmake, curl, emacs, Apache,

XView XView is a widget toolkit from Sun Microsystems introduced in 1988. It provides an OPEN LOOK user interface for X Window System applications, with an object-oriented application programming interface (API) for the C programming language. Its in ...

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 TCL or Tcl or TCLs may refer to: Business * TCL Technology, a Chinese consumer electronics and appliance company **TCL Electronics, a subsidiary of TCL Technology * Texas Collegiate League, a collegiate baseball league * Trade Centre Limited ...

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

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 Xming is an X11 display server for Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows XP and later. Features Xming provides the X Window System display server, a set of traditional sample X applications and tools, as well as a set of fonts. ...

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 ide ...

only, was supported on the Windows NT 4.0 SP3+ for

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was intr ...

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

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 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 officiall ...

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 ( ...

4.01+. SFU 2.0 supported the following UNIX versions: Solaris 2.6+, HP-UX 10.2+, AIX 4.2+, Tru64 UNIX 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 rele ...

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) *

Client (TelnetClient) * Telnet server (TelnetServer) * Password synchronization (PasswdSync) *

ActiveState ActiveState Software Inc is a Canadian software company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. It develops, sells, and supports cross-platform development tools for dynamic languages such as Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Tcl, as well ...

ActivePerl (Perl) * UNIX utilities (UnixUtilities) * Cron 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 released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

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 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 wit ...

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 websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such ...

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 (earlier versions supported

FAT In nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers specifically to triglycerides (triple est ...

; 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

hotfix A hotfix or quick-fix engineering update (QFE update) is a single, cumulative package that includes information (often in the form of one or more files) that is used to address a problem in a software product (i.e., a software bug). Typically, hotf ...

es 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 collaborat ...

utilities are several versions older than the latest ones. A separate port of the up-to-date Debian utilities was started in 2007, but apparently abandoned in 2009. Several of the text processing utilities in SUA (e.g.

) 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, wh ...

or wide character text files. No version of Windows Services for UNIX is available for

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, released on April 25, 2005, is an edition of Windows XP for x86-64 personal computers. It is designed to use the expanded 64-bit memory address space provided by the x86-64 architecture. The prima ...

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

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 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