Banyan VINES resurrection

Banyan VINES was a network operating system developed by Banyan Systems for computers running on top of AT&T's UNIX System V. It was used mainly in large corporate networks, with support for wide-area networking, using static and transient dial-up links. Some networks had hundreds of servers, if not more.

The underlying protocol was VINES IP, a protocol similar to Xerox's XNS. TCP/IP was also supported for client workstations in later versions.

Most servers were under support contracts and the software allowed for a fully-remote-managed network. They used this a lot since the underlying UNIX is restricted from system administrators. Banyan could access it to help you, if you paid them for every hour on a support call. The software was protected with a parallel port dongle known as a server key - these were used to ensure that each server had a unique serial number, as the serial number was used to generate each server's VINES IP address. The server key also contained a list of the additional software options installed on the server - options could be copied to the key from a separate option key. Most major versions of VINES also required an option key containing the new version's option bit. Sever keys had limited lifetimes, and it's unlikely that any have survived are still readable.

At the heart of VINES was StreetTalk, a directory service. All StreetTalk objects possessed a three part StreetTalk name, in the format Item@Group@Organisations. There were essentially four different classes of StreetTalk objects - Users, Services, Lists and Nicknames. Lists contained one or more StreetTalk names, and could include other Lists. Nicknames were aliases, and could be in a different group or organisation to the target item.

Each group had a list entitled AdminList@Group@Org which contained the administrators for that group. There was also a special organisation named Servers - each server would have it's own group named ServerName@Servers, with AdminList@Servername@Servers containing the adminstrators of that server.

Early versions of VINES were released only for Banyan's own 680x0 based server platforms, the BNS (Banyan Network Server) and the DTS (Desktop Server). There were later ports for PC hardware, and Banyan also produced an Intel based server named the CNS, which was released in both 80386 and 80486 variants.

Server Hardware

VINES supported PC based server hardware from at least version 2 onwards, although the earliest releases may have been limited to 286 based systems. The 286 version was limited in functionality, and was declared obsolete by the release of VINES 4.10.

Initially there were 386 and 486 variants of VINES - the release media for the two was identical, the only difference was the presence of the 486 option on the server key.

The standard release media was the AT version. There was also an SMP variant for supported SMP servers, and an MCA version for Microchannel based servers from IBM and other manufacturers. Despite its name the AT version also supported EISA hardware.

Banyan had a hardware certification program, which evaluated servers and produced machine specific installation notes. Theoretically VINES could still be installed on uncertified hardware, but Banyan wouldn't support any hardware related issues.

Up to VINES 5.54 there was no means of adding additional storage or network drivers to the server during installation, and you were limited to whatever drivers were included on the release media. Banyan would occasionally release a new minor version purely to support new hardware, such as VINES 4.11 and 5.52. Occasionally some addition network and communication drivers would be made available as a patch, but the server had to be already connected to the network via other means to install the patch.

From VINES 6.00 additional device drivers were supported, installed via a floppy from the server console. VINES 6.00 also introduced PCI support, although support was somewhat limited - for example it wasn't possible to have two instances of the same PCI NIC installed.

Various storage controllers were supported, including SCSI, ESDI and popular hardware RAID controllers. Early versions of VINES had a limit of 2GB per partition - if a physical or logical drive was larger than 2GB it would be automatically partitioned into smaller filesystems.

The first two variants of Banyan's ICA card were difficult to configure, as they needed a 128K memory window. They were easier to configure on EISA platforms, as the EISA configuration utility could be use to reserve a sufficient memory hole somewhere in the memory map. On non-EISA servers it was sometimes necessary to remove memory from the server to get an ICA to work. Banyan's hardware certification notes usually indicated how an ICA card (or more than one) could be configured on specific hardware. Later ICA models, the ICA/RM (Reduced Memory) and ICA/HS (High Speed), reduced the memory window to something more manageable.

Installing The Server

Installation media has been recovered for VINES 5.00, 5.54, 7.00 and 8.50. VINES 5.00 and 5.54 came as a stack of floppies, whilst 7.00 and 8.50 consisted of five floppies and a CD-ROM ISO.

Some releases of VINES were supplied with a pack-in patch on one or two floppies that either fixed serious issues or added a feature that wasn't ready when the gold master was produced. This would need to be applied once the server was up and running, and would change the patch level of the server. For example VINES 4.00 came with the 4.00(1) patch which added the STDA service, whilst VINES 6.00 came with the 6.00(1) patch to resolve potential issue with the mail service.

Most versions can be installed without the need for a server key, by gaining root access and editing some files. CD based versions tend to require a SCSI CD-ROM drive - although there were drivers released for Compaq and HP based ATAPI drives, these were tied to specific server hardware. IDE hard drives are supported, but supporting drives larger than 504MB in capacity is somewhat limited.

The system can be installed under VirtualBox, but requires version 7.0.0, currently in beta, for networking support. If installing a CD version you need to enable a BusLogic adapter, and configure it to use the I/O address of 330h for it's ISA emulation address. The default NIC also needs changing from PC net to one of the legacy models such as the NE2000 or WD8003E. (More to follow once VirtualBox 7.0.0 ships).

For all versions boot up of the Install 1 floppy and follow the prompts. The system may check for an server key or option key during installation, but will still proceed. (VINES 6.00 requires a dongle to be present to begin installation - the CD-ROM is currently lost).

The installer appears to use BIOS calls to perform the initial part of installation, which means that the initial portion of the installation process appears to work on unsupported hardware, only failing when the system fails to mount the root filesystem on the first reboot.

Once installed, and you are not in possession of either a working server key or a paper activation code, you will need to simulate the server key by performing the following steps, as follows:

The server will start booting and perform at disk check. Once "Done with disk checking" is displayed, press CTRL-C and type in the root password (passwords for 5.00 and 5.54 are listed below, passwords for later revisions are chosen at installation time), and gain a root prompt.

You need to set a serial number. Banyan's serial numbers for servers were seven decimal digits long, with the middle digit either a 0 or 1. Ensure that the serial number is unique across servers.

echo 2130145 > /disk1/banyan/comm/serial

Next the server key reader binary, /disk1/banyan/install/mwidget, needs to be replaced with a shell script. Make a backup copy of the original, as it contains pertinent information which can be extracted later. The shell script should contain the following - the file .skini is written by the original mwidget, and is checked by the server service during bootup. Don't forget to make the script executable.

#!/bin/sh

echo 0 > /disk1/banyan/install/.skini

exit 0

Finally, create the file /disk1/banyan/ss/syopts.db, which contains a list of installed options. The text to the right of the colon can be omitted - it's shown here to denote what each option represents. Not all options are needed, but some are mandatory. This list is incomplete as it can also contain additional variants of some of the SNA services, some Banyan internal options which require additional software, and the option to convert the server to an ENS server. A full list can be obtained by running 'strings' on the original mwidget binary.

ss:Server Operating System
bfs:File Service
bps:Print Service
st:StreetTalk
sem:Semaphore Service
nb:Netbios Emulation Service
VS:VINES Authenticator & Network Guardian
stda:StreetTalk Directory Assistance Service
ripl:Remote IPL service
AFP:AppleTalk Filing Protocol Service
ATA:AppleTalk Agent Service
VPA:VINES Proxy Agent
ONM:Network Management (Old)
SNM:Network Management (New)
VCS:Configuration Service
evs:VINES Event Management Service
WAN:WAN Service
bms:Intelligent Messaging Service (PA100)
sna1:3270/SNA Service - 32 lu's (SNA100)
vt:Asynch Terminal Emulation (HA100)
Kermit:Kermit File Transfer for HA100 (HA102)
NM:Remote Network Management (NM130)
bsc:3270/BSC emulation-32 devices (BSC100)
x.25:X.25 Communications (PDN100)
hdlc:Server-to-Server WAN - HDLC (IM101)
dialin:Asynchronous Dialin Support (NA100)
s_s_lan:Server-to-Server LAN (IM100)
lu62:SNA LU6.2/PU2.1 Service
pcprint:Network PC-based Printing (PCP100) 
tcpip_route:TCP/IP Routing (TCP100)
s_s_tcpip:TCP/IP Server-to-Server (TCP200)
fsunix:VINES Application Toolkit (VDT100)
v386:Intel 80386 platform
rev3.0:Revision 3.00 of VINES
x.29:X.29 Virtual Terminal Option (HA201)
smtp:VINES SMTP mail gateway
mac_mail:Macintosh Mail Gateway
bridge:IBM SLR Token Ring Bridge
asna0:Advanced 3270 Service - 32 lu's (SNA200)
gsna0:Graphics 3270 Service - 32 lu's (SNA300)
v486:Intel 80486 platform
edd:Enterprise Data Distribution Service (edd100)
va-1:VINES Assistant (VA100)
rev5.0:Revision 5.00 of VINES
rev4.0:Revision 4.00 of VINES
mps1:Multi-processor 4.00 VINES (MPS100)
x.29dialin:X.29 Dial-in Option (NA200)
sna6:Server-to-Server WAN - SNA (SNA600)
msformac:Intelligent Messaging Service for Macintosh
atps:AppleTalk Protocol Support
s_s_isdnb:ISDN BRI Server-to-Server (000047)
ds1_cept:T1/E1 Server-to-Server (000054)
ebr:Enterprise Backup and Restore
ebs:Enterprise Backup and Restore Service
rev6.0:Revision 6.00 of VINES
hcs:VINES History Collector Service (snmp100)
snmp:VINES SNMP Master Agent (snmp100)
eddsat:Enterprise Data Distribution Satellite (edd101)
eddupdat:Enterprise Data Distribution Update Service
ebrjbs:Enterprise Backup and Restore Jukebox Small (ebr102)
ebrjbm:Enterprise Backup and Restore Jukebox Medium (ebr103)
ebrjbl:Enterprise Backup and Restore Jukebox Large (ebr104)
rev7.0:Revision 7.00 of VINES

Exit the shell and the server should start to come up again. Say no to the two questions on restoring from a backup on installing additional options. You will now be presented with a lists of supported network cards, serial communications cards and tape controller adaptors. Select the relevant network adaptor here - under VINES 7.00 and later it's possible to instal additional network drivers from a floppy if nothing suitable is listed, but not until after the server is up and running.

The server will prompt for a server name. It will then try to look on the network for other servers to validate that the server name is unique. If another server is discovered on the network, the account details of an administrator of that server can be used to add this server to StreetTalk. If no other server is found the server can be set up as either the first server on the network, or as a server to be added to a network later. The second option leaves AdminList@server-name@Servers empty, which must be updated by an existing user on another server once the server joins the network.

Eventually after a delay of some minutes the Server Monitor should come up. If it doesn't then check the logs for the server service - an error in sysopts.db can cause services to fail to start up. Exiting the server monitor brings you to the main server menu.

Installing Clients

Clients exited for MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT 3.51/4.0, OS/2 1.x and 2.x and above, and Windows 2000.

The DOS client has been uploaded to archive.org as three self-extracting .EXE files. DOSMST.EXE contains the client files common to all NICs, whilst DOSDSK1.EXE and DOSDSK2.EXE contain the driver files for every supported NIC, together with the NDIS drivers which should work with any NIC with a DOS NDIS driver. Copy the common files and selected driver files into a directory. Then run PCCONFIG to configure the client settings. Once configured running BAN.EXE should start the client and connect to a server. If the server is running a different version of VINES to that of the client it should invoke the NEWREV process to upgrade or downgrade the client files.

OS/2 is supported from VINES 4.10 onwards. OS/2 2.x support was added under VINES 5.50, but was available as an optional patch for earlier VINES revisions. Unfortunately the OS/2 client itself is lost at the moment. OS/2 client programs have to be installed on at least one server on the network for an OS/2 client to be able to connect - from VINES 5.00 the installation of OS/2 files was made optional at installation time.

Windows 95. A server on the network needs to be patched with the Windows 95 client files - patches are bundled with the client installation files, but have to be applied from a DOS workstation. There was also a separate client for Windows 98 released in Banyan's final days - as of yet it hasn't been recovered.

Windows NT 3.51/4.00. Various client revisions have been recovered. None require any patches to be applied to the server.

Windows 2000. A client was issued in late 1999, after Banyan had declared that they were pulling out of the market. As of yet it hasn't been recovered.

There was also an extension for Mac System 7.0 and above that added some extra functionality, although a Mac could login to VINES without it. There was also client for Banyan's E-mail system. Both are currently lost.

There were various third-party Windows clients for Banyan's E-mail system. In addition Banyan acquired BeyondMail and offered versions 2 and 3 of that to customers.

Security

root passwords for a few version leaked:

Version	Password	Notes
8.XX	<unkown>
7.XX	7thHeaven	not sure of case
6.XX	disisdaONE!
5.5X	YamIhere
5.00	Rain4Est
4.11	upyourREV
4.10	StorminNormin	Norman Schwartskorf - Gulf War
4.00	vivelaVINES
3.10	logrhythm	spelled incorrectly on purpose
3.01	nobozos
3.00	pandorasbox
3.00 Beta	makethenumbers
2.10	havingfun
1.31	springfever

There was also a password for accessing the low-level formatter from the release media on Banyan's own server hardware - Banyan required severs to be fitted with drives bearing Banyan's signature, but this could be circumvented by typing the formatter password at the installation menu. On CNS servers with later copies of the release media this was nosedive, whilst other known formatter passwords were goforit and format.

Managing the system

The server console has several menus for managing the server. Tasks available include changing communications options, hardware configuration, kernel configuration from VINES 6.00 onwards, network management, print queue management, and server shutdown. UNIX access is also available if configured.

Once logged in, a PC client will have drive Z: mapped to the VINES Files service of a local server. This contains various user tools for accessing VINES service, such as MAIL.EXE, together with the full set of management tools. Banyan also released two sets of GUI management tools - ENS Management Tools (currently lost) and StreetTalk Explorer.

The main management tool is MANAGE.EXE which allows a user to manage user accounts, services and other aspects of StreetTalk. The individual management tools can also be invoked individually - MUSER.EXE for managing users, MNICK.EXE for managing nicknames, MSERVICE.EXE for managing services, MLIST.EXE for managing lists, MORG.EXE for managing organisations and MGROUP.EXE for managing groups.

There's also the tool OPERATE.EXE for managing specific servers and their services.

Network management - MNET.EXE - lets the user inspect communications statistics from each server. The same tool is available from the server console.

Another management tool was SETARL.EXE for setting access rights on file services. SETATTR.EXE could be used to set file attributes.

Communications and Protocols

The main communication protocol used by VINES was VINES IP. A server's VINES IP address would be in the form xxxxxxxx0001, with the first four bytes being the server's serial number. Workstation VINES IP addresses were in the range xxxxxxxx8000 to xxxxxxFFFE, with the first part being the serial number of the server acting as the PCs routing server. The routing server was the first server to respond to an ARP request and could be any server on that PCs LAN segment - with later VINES releases there was an option to limit the number of active clients a server could route. Various LAN types were supported - such Ethernet, Token Ring, ARCNET, VistaLan, and IBM's PCNET. FDDI was also available with later VINES revisions.

A server could also communicate over serial lines. This required the server to be fitted with one of Banyan's own 6 port ICA cards. Persyst mutliport serial cards were also supported, but these may have stopped working as of VINES 6.00. The ICA supported HDLC and X.25 as well as standard modem connections.

There was also support for Fractional T1 and ISDN via certain server based cards. Later versions of Banyan's SDK also allowed the creation of additional ISDN drivers, although none may have come to market.

VINES also supported TCP/IP. Initially this was to allow TCP/IP to be routed through VINES networks, or VINES IP to be routed through TCP/IP networks. There was also a variant of FTP Software's PCTCP suite that encapsulated TCP/IP in VINES IP, and some third party services could also talk via TCP/IP. As of later maintenance releases of 5.54 it was also possible to have workstations talk to the server via TCP/IP. This was fairly straightforward to configure on Windows 95 and NT clients - with DOS clients it required some lost third-party software. Early releases of VINES required a TCP/IP routing software option to be installed to allow a server based service to talk via TCP/IP - this limit was relaxed by VINES 6.00.

VINES also supported AppleTalk from VINES 5.00 onwards, including LocalTalk using a server installed card.

IPX was also supported, but only for use with ENS for Netware.

Services

A partial list of VINES services - there were others, some of which were hidden from the user and administrator.

Server Service

The Server Service - SS@server-name@Servers - was responsible for starting and stopping all other services. Mandatory

StreetTalk

StreeTalk - ST@server-name@Servers - was the directory service. StreetTalk services maintain a list of all other services, and the groups that they contained, but would only contain full item information for its local groups. Later versions of VINES added StreetTalk shadowing, which allowed read-only copies of groups to be placed on other servers. Mandatory.

StreetTalk Directory Assistant (STDA)

An optional service that presented details of the entire distributed StreetTalk database. Its purpose was to reduced traffic to remote StreetTalk services over slow links. STDA would rebuild its databases once a day (typically overnight). Services could be configured as Satellite STDA servcices, meaning that they picked up their data from another STDA service.

VINES Security

VINES Security - VS@sever-name@Servers (or VanGuard@server-name@Servers in early releases) looked after security sessions, validating a user or service's security tokens. It would poll workstations occasionally to keep sessions alive. Mandatory.

VINES Files

VINES Files - VINES Files@server-name@Servers - was a file service containing VINES client programs and management tools. It would be mapped to drive Z: at login, and could be any local instance of the service running the same client version as the user's workstation. Its contents were read only to all users.

Mail

Email services - later known as Intelligent Messaging. The service was typically named MS@server-name@Servers, and would be created under that name if the software option was present at server installation, but could have any name. A user's Mail service was controlled by the SETMAIL command in their profile.

File

A file service was used to share files. Each service was mapped to a specific disk on the server. There could be multiple file services per server.

Print

A print queue. By default these could only be connected to parallel or serial ports on the server itself. With the PC Print option installed these services could also be mapped to PC based printers (the PC had to be running the PCPRINT.EXE TSR) or Banyan compatible print servers.

NetBIOS Naming

Banyan's implementation of NetBIOS allowed clients to talk to each other over NetBIOS even if they were attached to different LAN segments. They did this via a NetBIOS naming service. The workstation had to load the additional NetBIOS TSR, and issue a SETNETB command to connect to the relevant NetBIOS naming service.

Semaphore

Like NetBIOS, Banyan also supported the old DOS Semaphore API over the entire network, using a TSR and service. This was obsolete by the early 1990s.

SNA

Banyan's SNA services emulated IBM 3174 controllers, allowing a PC to act as a 3270 series terminal. There were several different options of these SNA services, each emulating a different number of LUs (logical units). Communication was via an IBM Token Ring card or SDLC card fitted in the server. There were also two other variants of the SNA client - one offering advanced text facilities (such as international character sets), and another offering graphics support - both of these came with additional software to install on the server which is currently lost.

Asynchronous Terminal Emulation

This service allowed a client to connect to a shared serial line on the server to access a shared modem or terminal session on a legacy system. The service required either a Banyan ICA card (Intelligent Communications Adaptor) or a Persyst DCP-88/VM serial adaptor to function. The service could also act as a remote server console.

DOS/Unix Bridge

A special service only made available if certain third-party services were installed, or if the SDK was installed. It allowed a PC to access the entire filesystem on the server, but only as the user 'local', the user account under which all third-party services ran. Typically this was used to pass files to and from the queue directories of mail gateways. Most VINES services ran as 'root', hence their files were not accessible.

PC Based Service

It was also possible to run services on a PC and have that available via StreetTalk. Lotus Notes, for example, ran as a PC based service under VINES. Banyan also had a product that allowed NT servers to act as a standard file services, which too ran as PC based service. In every case the PC needed to be logged in as a user on the AdminList of the group in which the service resided.

RIPL

Used for managing boot disk images sent to diskless workstations which communicated via the RIPL protocol. Seldom used.

VINES Assistant

Optional management tools comprising of a suite of utilities, plus a server based service that monitored its server and sent out alerts if certain thresholds had been met.

SDK

Banyan had an SDK, known as the VINES Application Toolkit, for developing server and PC based applications. VINES 6.00 introduced the ability to write device drivers, and also switched to using GCC. Currently no versions of the SDK have been recovered. Initial copies of the SDK came on a stack of floppy disks (or QIC tape if installing on one of Banyan's own servers), whilst later versions appeared on CD-ROM.

What's new per version

The early history of VINES is lost, with very little surviving. Here's a brief, but incomplete, history of changes.

VINES 2.xx existed in some form on PC based servers, but may have been limited to 286 processors only.

VINES 4.00 introduced major changes to StreetTalk - changes to the way it updated meant that the the special group Servers@Servers was no longer required. 4.00 was also the last version to be released for 680x0 and 286 based servers. VINES 4.00 also introduced the STDA directory assistant service, in the form of patch 4.00(1).

VINES 4.10 added support for Windows 3.0 and OS/2 1.x clients. The were changes made at the session level to allow workstations to multiple sessions to be made with some services simultaneously. The initial release of 4.10 had a serious bug which would lead to file system corrupt on certain file truncation operations - fixed in a patch.

VINES 4.11 was a new cut of 4.10 to add support for additional server storage hardware.

VINES 5.00 added support for Apple Macs and file access rights on a per file basis. This was a fork of 4.10 so didn't support the new hardware platforms introduced in 4.11. The default S5 filesystem was replaced with the S10 one - under the S5 filesystem servers could run out of inodes despite having plenty of spare disk space.

VINES 5.50 added 4.11's hardware support to the other features of 5.00. The routing protocol used between servers was changed to one that generate far less traffic on large networks.

VINES 5.52, 5.53 and 5.54 added additional server hardware support. TCP/IP based client support appeared as a patch to 5.54.

VINES 6.00 added loadable device drivers and root access. Loadable drivers for storage devices could be loaded into the kernel at installation time.

VINES 6.20, 6.30 and 6.40 were maintenance releases of 6.00.

VINES 7.00 added support for larger filesystems (previously they were limited to 2GB), long filename support from certain clients. The root filesystem was also enlarged. VINES 7.00 also introduced paper-based server keys and option codes, although dongles could still be used. Patches were also issued to allow paper based option keys on 5.54 and 6.40 servers.

VINES 7.10 was a maintenance release for 7.00, containing nothing really new.

VINES 8.00 added very little other than support for MPS 1.4, and support for add-on comms card drivers (although none seem to have been released). SMP had been supported since at least VINES 4.00 on certified hardware, but needed special media. VINES 8.00 was unique in that it didn't have its own option bit, and could be installed on any VINES 7.00 server. It may have simply been VINES 7.20 renamed.

VINES 8.50 was the Y2K compliant version of 8.00. Some services and features were not Y2K compliant for various reasons, although these services continued to run.

VINES 8.60 was the final release of VINES, containing all of the maintenance patches issued for VINES 8.50 since its release.

There was also a product named ENS for Netware that allowed Netware servers to use StreetTalk. Initially these used their own special ENS servers, which were cut down VINES servers. ENS 1.00 was effectively VINES 5.20, and ENS 1.1 was VINES 5.30. A server running VINES 5.50 onwards could also act as an ENS server with the relevant software option. The Netware NLM and ENS client files are currently lost, as are media for the two ENS server releases.

There were also versions of VINES released for some versions of commercial UNIX - SCO Unix, Solaris, HP-UX and AIX. Some of these were issued under ENS branding. None of these appear to have survived.

Banyan also issued a VINES implementation that ran on Windows NT entitled StreetTalk for NT.

What's Missing

An incomplete list of currently missing software:

VINES 2.xx or 3.xx release media and patches for PC based servers.

VINES 4.00, 4.10 or 4.11 release media and maintenance patches.

VINES 5.00 maintenance patches. 5.00(0) has been recovered, but it had significant issues.

VINES 6.00 release media.

VINES 8.00 release media.

VINES Application Toolkit - any version

Client for OS/2

Client for Windows 98

Client for Windows 2000

Macintosh System 7 extension and VINES Mail for Mac.

Advanced 3270 Service installation floppy

Graphics 3270 Service installation floppy

ENS For Netware - ENS Server Software, ENS NLM and VAP, ENS client

VINES for SCO Unix

ENS for HP-UX, Solaris and AIX

StreetTalk for Windows NT. The software survives, but it needs an activation key to be installed.

Banyan Intranet Connect - webmail portal that ran under IIS on NT.

StreetTalk Access for Windows NT - allowed NT servers to be used as VINES file services. A precursor to StreetTalk for Windows NT.

BeyondMail 2.x or 3.x

SMTP Gateway service - version 1.30 does exist, but it won't install on later servers.

MacMail Gateway - little is known about this service.

EBR client software.

FTP Software's PC-TCP suite with Banyan specific drivers, version 2.x and 3.x. IBANYAN encapsulated TCP/IP in VINES-IP, EBANYAN hooked the currently installed Ethernet driver.

IPSwitch's TCP/IP suite for DOS - needed to get Banyan's DOS TCP/IP client working.