Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for NOVELL@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Mailing List # Version number 19980527 This FAQ file is maintained by John Lyon. The FAQ attempts to cover Netware 2.x, 3.x and 4.x with increasing coverage of NetWare 4.x in general and is organised into fairly distinct sections. Items added or changed since the last issue are marked with a * in the table of contents. Material for the FAQ is always welcome. One good way to immortalize yourself is to submit a question (and answer) for the FAQ to the FAQ maintainer (mailto:jelyon@manatee.wustl.edu). If you spot any omissions or errors in the FAQ, please contact the FAQ maintainer. -= HALL OF FAME =- (online only, last updated July 15, 1996, now closed) CONTENTS A. INTRODUCTION A.1 What is this "FAQ" file? A.2 How can I get the FAQ? A.3 How are questions added to the FAQ? A.4 Things that should be in the FAQ but currently aren't B. THE MAILING LIST B.1 LISTSERV -- what is it? B.2 Commands to LISTSERV B.3 Posting a message to the list B.4 List sysops B.5 Guidelines to network etiquette B.6 Other useful mailing lists/newsgroups B.7 Archived messages from the mailing list C. ARCHIVES OF USEFUL FILES C.1 How do I get to the archives? C.2 Official FTP sites for Novell files C.2.1 Official GOPHER site for Novell files and Information C.3 Other useful FTP sites C.4 Current NetWare program version numbers/dates C.4.1 Current NetWare program version numbers/dates in SYS:PUBLIC C.4.2 Current NetWare program version numbers/dates in SYS:LOGIN C.4.3 Current NetWare program version numbers/dates in SYS:SYSTEM C.4.4 Current NetWare NLM version numbers/dates in SYS:SYSTEM C.4.4.1 WWW Site maintaining a list of most current NLMs C.4.5 Current VLM Client Kit program version numbers/dates C.5 Current Personal NetWare program version numbers/dates C.6 NetWare Patches and Updates FAQ location C.7 NetWare Free, Patching, Patches and Version FAQs locations C.8 Off-line alternatives C.9 Joe D.'s .NCF files C.9.1 Joe D.'s Startup.NCF C.9.2 Joe D.'s Autoexec.NCF C.9.3 Joe D.'s Patch.NCF C.9.4 Joe D.'s Selected update/patch files for NW 3.12 D. NOVELL'S PHONE NUMBERS E. TCP/IP AND NETWARE E.1 What is TCP/IP E.2 Why you might want TCP/IP and Netware to co-exist E.3 Packet drivers/ODI drivers/NDIS drivers E.3.1 LAN WorkPlace (and other) documents available from Novell via WWW E.4 Why can't multiple TCP/IP stacks run on a workstation? E.5 Routing TCP/IP through a file server E.5.1 Why TCP/IP Routing Doesn't Always Work As Expected E.5.2 Security considerations of allowing IP Source Routing E.6 Setting up a Netware server as an FTP server E.7 BOOTP and RARP E.8 Further reading F. ELECTRONIC MAIL F.1 Pegasus Mail F.2 Setting up an Internet gateway for Pegasus Mail -- Charon F.3 Another Internet gateway for Pegasus Mail -- Mercury F.3.1 Pegasus/Mercury plus NetWare 4.1 considerations F.4 Other electronic mail packages F.5 Eudora F.6 DNS and smart mailer G. PRINTING G.1 Printing to/from Unix systems G.2 Sharing PC and Macintosh printers G.3 Getting garbage in printouts G.4 Alternatives to PCONSOLE & PSTAT for monitoring printer queues G.5 Relocating print queues G.6 Do postscript printer viruses exist? G.7 Printing to the right queue without running Win / Print / Setup G.8 Alternatives to PSERVER for more than 16 printers, etc. G.9 Print Server auditing programs G.10 Running NPrinter or RPrinter without being logged in G.11 Page counting software G.12 Transfering print jobs between NetWare and Unix print queues H. MISC H.1 Booting a server without running STARTUP.NCF/AUTOEXEC.NCF H.2 How to login without running the system/user login script H.3 Remotely controlling a PC with a telnet compatible program H.4 Getting userIDs and other information into programs H.4.1 Environment variables H.4.2 Piping in information from WHOAMI H.4.3 Novell APIs H.4.4 Third Party Utilities H.5 What do all those columns in STAT.NLM v2.0 mean? H.6 Changing the number of licenced users on a Netware server H.7 Register memory ("Cache memory alloc. out of avail. memory" msg) H.8 Where to get the Windows NT requester H.9 Why can't I format a floppy under Windows when using boot ROM? H.10 Getting a list of usernames on a server to an ASCII file H.10.1 Creating users from an ASCII file H.10.1.1 Mass User Management H.10.1.2 UImport -- reads an ASCII text file and adds users H.10.1.3 ScanUser -- scans/creates unknown/missing Mail directories H.11 Remote access to a LAN H.12 Short Term Memory -- how much does your server need? H.13 BTRIEVE -- what do I need? H.14 What to do if you've lost your SUPERVISOR password H.15 Synchronising workstation time with server time H.16 Problems with disks and tape drives on Adaptec SCSI controllers H.17 FTP/email/WWW URL contact info for various NIC MLID drivers H.17.1 Suitable NICs for the NetWare server itself H.18 Fax products for NetWare H.19.1 Backup software products for NetWare H.19.2 Backup hardware products for NetWare H.19.3 Backup methodologies H.19.4 Disaster Recovery methodologies H.20 Resetting Intruder Detection for Supervisor ID H.21 Testing that the Login process was successful H.22 Cron-like programs H.23 Anti-Virus programs H.23.1 A bit of an Anti-Virus tutorial H.24 How can I keep my server on time? H.24.1 What is my TIMEZONE? H.25.1 NetWare Memory Requirements -- Time To Worry? H.25.2 NetWare Memory Requirements -- How Much Is Enough? H.25.3 NetWare Memory Requirements -- And The Real World H.26 How to wire 10base-T cable using RJ-45 jacks H.27 Advantages of purging files H.28 Moving user rights/passwords from server to server H.29 Spanning a volume across multiple hard drives H.30 Load Balancing NLMs H.31 Should I use SCSI or IDE hard drives on the file server H.32 Expected bandwidth from "10 Mbit" ethernet H.33 Performance considerations of Bridges versus Routers H.34 Data Transfer by Bus type H.35 Maximum wiring lengths H.36 AC Power and its effect on file servers H.37 Negative numbers from CHKVOL -- yup, time to worry H.38.1 Running Netscape across NetWare (vs dial-up) H.38.2 Running Netscape wherever (without dial-up facilities) H.39 Help Desk software for NetWare H.40 Deleting very large "sparse" files H.41 Slow mount of 50 GB drive array H.42 Clearing "Not-Logged-In" license robbers H.43 Running alternatives to MONITOR on the server console H.44 NLMs allowing access to NetWare Server C drive H.45 NLM to delay loading of AUTOEXEC.NCF NLMs H.46 Checksum errors showing up on MONITOR.NLM screen H.47 Using EMM386 with Boot ROM (ie. diskless) workstations H.48 Fixing NetWare partition problems when Mac support NLMs are used H.49 BSOD (Black Screen of Death) fix H.50 Running a World Wide Web server on NetWare H.51 Testing the strength/security of your users' passwords H.52 Faster (but riskier) re-mirroring after server crash H.53 Sharing a modem across a NetWare network H.54.1 Using the Debugger to determine the cause of the ABEND H.54.2 Help for Debugger commands H.55 Network management utilities H.56 Only see 2 GB of disk space in DOS/Win when U know HD/volume is bigger H.57 Patching NetWare to handle the Year 2000 and beyond I. SAMPLE CONFIGURATIONS I.1 Comparison between NETX, VLM & Client 32 NetWare Client Software I.2 Sample NET.CFG for conventional NETX shells I.3 Sample NET.CFG for VLM redirectors I.4 Tuning the performance of the NetWare DOS Requester I.4.1 General Information I.4.2 Memory handling I.4.3 Module loading tuning / general tips I.4.4 Packet tuning I.5 An Example STARTNET.BAT for use with the VLM Redirector I.6 Sample Appletalk entries in AUTOEXEC.NCF J. NETWARE 4.X MATERIAL J.1 Installing Netware 3.12 or 4.0x without a CD-ROM drive (sort of) J.2 Dumping your configuration to an ASCII file J.3 To Upgrade or Migrate to NetWare 4.1 J.3.1 Upgrading to NetWare 3.12 instead of NetWare 4.1 J.3.2 Upgrading from NetWare 3.11 to NetWare 3.12 J.4 Disable Login Banner J.5 Backing up/Restoring NDS -- multiple methodologies J.6 Handling NetWare 4.x Page Faults J.7 NetWare 4.x block size, compression and sub-allocation J.7.1 Alternative compression products J.8 Expanding the size of the NetWare SYS volume J.9 NetWare 4.1 NLM version list J.10 NetWare 4.1 patch list J.11 The Novell Consulting Toolkit J.12 Gaining access to the Admin password on a NetWare 4.x Tree J.13 NetWare 4.10 SFT-III (System Fault Tolerance III) J.13.1 Considerations J.13.1.1 Backup Considerations J.13.1.2 UPS Considerations J.13.1.3 MSL Considerations J.13.1.4 Network Management Considerations J.13.2 SFT-III and Raid 5 J.13.3 Will SFT-III work on NetWare 3.12 ? J.13.4 Will NetWare Connect work on SFT-III ? J.13.5 ARCserve 5.01g and SFT-III configuration J.13.6 TCP/IP and SFT-III configuration J.13.7 SFT-III Engines swapping J.13.8 MS_Engines produced a different output J.13.9 Additional information J.13.10 Other products of interest: Vinca StandbyServer J.14 Mirroring K. SOME USEFUL TEXTS & SOFTWARE K.1 The Novell Companion K.2 LAN Connectivity from New Rider Publishing K.3 Using NetWare 4 K.4 Novell's guide to NetWare LAN analysis K.5 Novell's SDK CD-ROM K.6 EMS Professional Shareware NetWare CD-ROM K.7 Shareware NetWare API Library K.8 Quickpath to NetWare 4.1 Networks K.9 Novell Application Notes K.10 The NSE Pro CD K.11 Netware 4 Administration K.12 Using NetWare 4.1 - The Most Complete Reference L. ETHERNET FRAME TYPES: DON PROVAN'S DEFINITIVE ANSWER L.1 Introduction L.2 The Physical Structure of the Four Ethernet Frame Types L.3 The Political Origin of the Four Ethernet Frame Types L.3.1 Where did Ethernet_II come from? L.3.2 Where did Ethernet_802.2 come from? L.3.3 Where did Ethernet_802.3 come from? L.3.4 Where did Ethernet_SNAP come from? L.3.5 Why does IPX run on all four frame types? L.4 Should You Use Ethernet_802.3? L.4.1 What frame type Joe D. uses L.5 Which Ethernet frame type should I use for IPX? M. OBTAINING CNE QUALIFICATION M.1 What is a CNE M.2 How to get CNE qualification M.3 Useful reading for CNE studies M.4 CNE-related documents from Novell FAXBACK Service N. CD-ROM MATERIAL N.1 How do I get to see a CD drive on my Netware v3.12 server? N.2 100% CPU utilization when mounting a CD-ROM N.3.1 CD-ROM software products for NetWare N.3.2 CD-ROM hardware products for NetWare N.4 CD-ROM resources via the WWW N.5 Mounting an IDE CD-ROM on a NetWare server N.6 Mapping CD-ROM drives O. NETWARE and VISUAL BASIC O.1 Obtaining files demonstrating Visual Basic with Netware O.2 Visual Basic and Netware AppNotes O.3 Visual Basic and Netware Books O.4 Apiary's Developer Suite for NetWare - VB 4.0 Edition O.5 NetBasic & Visual NetBasic P. SELECTED ERROR MESSAGES -- WHAT THEY MEAN P.1 "Lan receive buffer limit reached" P.2 "Primary Interrupt Controller Detected A Lost Hardware Interrupt" P.3 "Loader cannot find public symbol..." P.4 Getting rid of *all* NetWare system messages on a client PC P.5 Using the Message Timeout option of the VLM Q. NOVELL AND WINDOWS 95 Q.1 Booting Windows 95 from NetWare on a disk-less workstation Q.2 Upgrading to Windows 95 Q.3 The NetWare Requestor for Windows 95 Q.4 Server install note Q.5 Long filename install workarounds Q.6 Crippled MS NetWare Requestor stack Q.7 NetWare 4.x NDS and Windows 95 Q.8 Windows 95 WWW links Q.9 Telling Windows 95 to back-off! Q.10 Let's be clear...this is a _NOVELL_ list Q.11 The best version of the Windows 95 Help File is... Q.12 Integrating the Netware Client 4 DOS/Windows (VLMs) with Windows 95 Q.12.1 Installation Overview Q.12.2 Some FAQs on integrating NetWare Client kit (VLMs) with Windows 95 Q.12.3 Detailed Step-by-Step Installation/Configuration Instructions Q.13 Windows 95 + SAPs .NE. NetWare file server !!! Q.14 Is there any way to check the version of Client32 for Win95? R. TEXT EDITORS -- "If a tree falls in a forest..." R.0 Word 5/DOS from Microsoft R.1 QEdit from SemWare R.1.1 The Semware Editor from SemWare R.2 Multi-Edit from American Cybernetics R.3 Brief from Borland R.4 Edlin from Microsoft R.5 Copy con filename from Microsoft R.6 DOS 5.x/6.x (QBasic) Edit from Microsoft R.7 Epsilon from Lugaru Software R.8 AAEMACS with Gnu source code R.9 G (freeware) R.50 Windows Editors R.51 WinEdit from Wilson WindowWare R.52 MegaEdit from WinNET Communications, Inc. R.53 PFE (freeware) R.54 TextPad from Helios Software Solutions R.55 Zeus for Windows (shareware) R.99 VEdit, KEdit, HEdit, PE, & others S. FURTHER INFORMATION (files available ONLY by FTP or WWW) S.0 NOVTOP10.TXT - Top "10" NetWare Related Internet Sites S.1 311-312a.TXT - Info on Updating a NetWare 3.11 server to 3.12 S.2 311-312b.TXT - Info on Upgrading a NetWare 3.11 server to 3.12 S.3 31x-41x.TXT - Email thread on Upgrading NetWare 3.1x to 4.10 S.4 AUDITCON.TXT - Email thread on NetWare's Auditing Facilities S.5 BRIDGING.TXT - Info on NetWare 4.x Bridging S.6 ETHvsTRx.TXT - Email thread on Ethernet versus Token Ring S.7 FTP&HTTP.TXT - Info on NetWare Hardware/Software Vendors S.8 INTERNET.TXT - Email thread on Netware & The Road Ahead S.9 INTRO2IP.TXT - Info on the Internet Protocol S.10 IPX-2-IP.TXT - Email thread on IPX to IP Convertors S.11 NETNOTFY.TXT - NetNotify Bulletin & Notification mailing list S.12 NOT-NEWS.TXT - Info on this NOVELL-specific mailing LIST S.13 NOV-100.TXT - Email thread on NetWare 4.x 100% Utilization issue S.14 NOV-ATM.TXT - Email thread on NW & Asynchronous Transfer Mode S.15 NOV-BAKx.TXT - Email thread on NetWare Backup issues S.16 NOV-BIO.TXT - Info on contributors to the Novell Internet List S.17 NOV-BM.TXT - Email thread on Novell Border Manager S.18 NOV-BR9x.TXT - Notes & thread on BrainShare'95, '96 & Green River S.19 NOV-BSOD.TXT - Info on NetWare and the "Black Screen of Death" S.20 NOV-CD.TXT - Email thread on NetWare Server CD-ROMs S.21 NOV-CNEx.TXT - Email thread on NetWare and CNE certification S.22 NOV-COMx.TXT - Email thread on Netware and Serial Communication S.23 NOV-DHCP.TXT - Email thread on NetWare & DHCP S.24 NOV-FDDI.TXT - Email thread on Fiber Data Distributed Interface S.25 NOV-FTP.TXT - Email thread on ftp'able files for NetWare S.26 NOV-HDWx.TXT - Email thread on NetWare file server hardware S.27 NOV-ISDN.TXT - Email thread on NetWare across ISDN lines S.28 NOV-MAP.TXT - Email thread on NetWare drive mappings S.29 NOV-MEMx.TXT - Email thread on NetWare memory management S.30 NOV-MOAB.TXT - Email thread on NW's "Next Gen" IP-Only NOS S.31 NOV-MSCx.TXT - Email thread on miscellaneous NetWare topics S.32 NOV-NAL.TXT - Email thread on the Novell Application Launcher S.33 NOV-NCFG.TXT - Email thread on Net.cfg settings S.34 NOV-NDSx.TXT - Email thread on NetWare Directory Services S.35 NOV-NFS.TXT - Email thread on the Network File System S.36 NOV-NICx.TXT - Email thread on Network Interface Cards S.37 NOV-NLI.TXT - Email thread on NetWare Not-Logged-In Clearers S.38 NOV-NLSP.TXT - Email thread on Novell Link State Routing Protocol S.39 NOV-NWIP.TXT - Email thread on NetWare IP (Internet Protocol) S.40 NOV-OS2.TXT - Email thread on NetWare and OS/2 S.41 NOV-PERx.TXT - Email thread on NetWare Performance Aspects S.42 NOV-RS.TXT - Email thread on Novell Replication Services S.43 NOV-SAP.TXT - Info on NetWare SAPs S.44 NOV-SCSx.TXT - Email thread on Netware and SCSI devices S.45 NOV-SET.TXT - Email thread on NetWare SET Commands S.46 NOV-SVY.TXT - Responses to Novell's "Your NW 4 wish list" survey S.47 NOV-TIMx.TXT - Email thread on NetWare & Time Synchronization S.48 NOV-UPS.TXT - Email thread on Uninterruptable Power Supplies S.49 NOV-VER.TXT - Email thread on NetWare Software Versions S.50 NOV-VLM.TXT - Email thread on NetWare and Virtual Loadable Modules S.51 NOV-W95x.TXT - Email thread on NetWare and Windows 95 S.52 NOV-WEB.TXT - Email thread on NetWare as a WWW Server S.53 NOV-WIN.TXT - Email thread on Windows 3.x and NetWare S.54 NOVABEND.TXT - Email thread on NetWare ABnormal ENDs S.55 NOVBOOKS.TXT - Email thread on NetWare Books S.56 NOVCONSF.TXT - The Comp.Os.Netware.Security Faq S.57 NOVEMAIL.TXT - Email thread on NetWare and Electronic Mail S.58 NOVERMSG.TXT - Email thread on NetWare Error Messages S.59 NOVFRAME.TXT - Email thread on Ethernet Frame Types S.60 NOVNCOPY.TXT - Analysis of what NCopy *Really* Does S.61 NOVPRINx.TXT - Email thread on NetWare Printing S.62 NOVSETUP.TXT - Email thread on NetWare Setup Methodologies S.63 NOVTCPIP.TXT - Email thread on NetWare and TCP/IP S.64 NOVVIRUS.TXT - Email thread on NetWare Anti-Virus Products S.65 NVCL-NT.TXT - Email thread on the NT Requestor for NetWare S.66 NVCL32Dx.TXT - Email thread on NetWare's Client 32 for DOS&Win S.67 NW-NEWSx.TXT - Selected items from the NetWare News Mail List S.68 NW-vsxNT.TXT - Email thread on NetWare versus Windows NT S.69 NW411.TXT - Email thread on (Intra)NetWare 4.11 S.70 NW4SAA.TXT - Email thread on NetWare for SAA S.71 NWSCRIPT.TXT - Email thread on NetWare Log-In Script Files S.72 NW4xFAQ.TXT - NetWare 4.x FAQ based on CIS forum Q&A's S.73 NWUFAQ.TXT - A well-aged FAQ on NetWare for Unix S.74 ODI-IPX.TXT - Info on the move by Novell to the ODI specification S.75 ROUTERS.TXT - Email thread on Routers and NetWare routing S.76 SECURTYx.TXT - Email thread on NetWare Security Issues S.77 SUBNETS.TXT - Email thread on Subnetting S.78 SWITCHES.TXT - Email thread on Network Switches S.79 TCPIPWIN.TXT - Info on Windows + TCP/IP for Internet access S.80 UNIXWARE.TXT - Info on Novell's UnixWare S.81 USERMGMx.TXT - Email thread on NetWare User Management S.82 UTAHSTD.TXT - Utah naming & numbering standard for Novell objects S.83 VLM-NETX.TXT - Email thread on VLMs versus NETx redirector S.84 W95&SAPs.TXT - Info on Windows '95's SAP "feature" S.85 WIN95BOO.TXT - Info on booting Windows '95 diskless from NW server S.86 NW5.TXT - Email thread on NetWare 5 S.87 NOV-DNS.TXT - Email thread on NetWare & Domain Name Service S.88 NOV-LONG.TXT - Email thread on NetWare & Long Filenames S.89 NOV-Y2K.TXT - Email thread on NetWare and Year 2000 S.90 NOV-ZEN.TXT - Email thread on NetWare & Zero Effort Networks S.91 Y2K.HTM  - Email Comments on General Year 2000 Issues S.99 2BADDED.TXT - Misc. stuff not yet added to the FAQ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A. INTRODUCTION A.1 What is this "FAQ" file? This FAQ file is a list of Frequently Asked Questions, both administrative (how do I use this list?) and informational (where do I find this, how can I use this correctly?), that are asked often enough that it would be of general interest to post the answers to them periodically. A.2 How can I get the FAQ? An index version of this ASCII FAQ is mailed every other Monday to the novell@listserv.syr.edu. The full ASCII FAQ is available... By FTP at: Utah State (US) Original Novell FAQ location: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/misc/faq.txt *129.123.1.44* New Novell FAQ location: ftp://netlab1.usu.edu/novell.faq/ Brazil ftp://ftp.coppe.ufrj.br/mirror/novell/faq Also, NVFAQHTM.ZIP (everything!) and the 3 other common files are at: ftp://ftp.techdata.com/pub/dl001001/novell.faq ftp://ftp.techdata.com/pub/dl001001/novell.ndx ftp://ftp.techdata.com/pub/dl001001/nvfaq.zip ftp://ftp.techdata.com/pub/dl001001/nvfaqhtm.zip Via Gopher at: gopher://rphs33.physik.uni-regensburg.de/00/News/FAQs/Novell-NetWare-FAQ And via the World Wide Web in HTML, ASCII, zipped ASCII and its entirety at: Utah State (US) http://netlab1.usu.edu Florida (US) http://amelia.db.erau.edu/novell/faq/nov-faq.htm Massachusetts (US) http://www.tiac.net/users/timl/novell/nov-faq.htm Salford (UK) http://www.salford.ac.uk/ais/Network/novell/nov-faq.htm Scotland http://mft.ucs.ed.ac.uk/novell/novfaq.htm Wales http://www.meirion-dwyfor.ac.uk/uccuwww/novell.faq http://www2.meirion-dwyfor.ac.uk/uccuwww/novell.faq Denmark http://www.dfm.dtu.dk/netware/faq/nov-faq.htm *130.225.86.164* Portugal http://www.ua.pt/novell/nov-faq.htm South Africa http://www.nugsa.org.za/novell/nov-faq.htm Brazil http://www.coppe.ufrj.br/novell-faq/nov-faq.htm *146.164.63.4* Hungary http://naec.mti.bme.hu/novfaq/nov-faq.htm *152.66.111.1* Sweden http://www.petena.se/support/novfaq/nov-faq.htm Canada http://www.micro.org/novell/faq/nov-faq.htm Czech Republic http://www.jh-inst.cas.cz/novfaq/nov-faq.htm Australia: http://novell.pc.wa.edu.au/nov-faq.htm the Netherlands: http://rc.service.rug.nl/~cat/faq/nov-faq.htm There is also a copy of the HTML FAQ at...well, what does it matter, the site is firewalled... [Thx J.Z.H.] Accessing the HTML version of the FAQ from any of these locations will allow you to choose the one closest to you, for faster downloading. A.3 How are questions added to the FAQ? This FAQ is maintained as a service to the group. Most editorial opinions are those of the FAQ maintainer; if you disagree or spot an inaccuracy, or have a new question *with* answer that you would like included in the FAQ file, please email me directly (mailto:jelyon@manatee.wustl.edu) and I will attempt to include it in the next edition. I will edit answers to make the style consistent, but I cannot research answers. A.4 Things that should be in the FAQ but currently aren't Many items could be included in the FAQ, if people wish to contribute in any of the following areas (or create a new area): - documenting/explaining the NetWare console SET commands B. THE MAILING LIST B.1 LISTSERV -- what is it? LISTSERV is an automatic mailing list manager program. Each mailing list has a e-mail address which LISTSERV controls. For example the Novell mailing list has as its e-mail address NOVELL@listserv.syr.edu. LISTSERV forwards any mail sent to the list to all the people on the mailing list (in fact not all mail messages are forwarded: LISTSERV tries to catch spurious or faulty messages before they are forwarded). LISTSERV has its own e-mail address as well: the LISTSERV responsible for the Novell list can be found at LISTSERV@listserv.syr.edu. B.2 Commands to LISTSERV Any commands concerning the list (such as signing on or off the list) must be sent to LISTSERV and not to the list. Sending mail to the mailing list address, as opposed to the LISTSERV address will not only NOT get you subscribed, it will annoy over 1000 people world-wide, and use inordinate amounts of computer time around the world for no reason. To subscribe to the list, send the following mail to the above address (pick either internet or bitnet as appropriate--if you are not sure, consult the computer support staff at your site): To: LISTSERV@listserv.syr.edu Subject: Doesn't matter Text/body of: subscribe NOVELL Your Full Name If you have problems subscribing to the list, contact NOVELL-REQUEST@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU You may find it necessary to sign off the list (if you change e-mail address or job or find that there's too much mail to deal with). To get yourself removed from the list, send the following mail to the LISTSERV: To: LISTSERV@listserv.syr.edu Subject: Doesn't matter Text/body of: unsubscribe NOVELL If you have problems unsubscribing from the list, contact NOVELL-REQUEST@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU By default, LISTSERV does not send you a copy of mail you post to the list. If you want to see mail you send to the list, send the following mail to the LISTSERV: To: LISTSERV@listserv.syr.edu Subject: Doesn't matter Text/body of: set novell repro To receiving mail in undigested format, send the following mail to the LISTSERV: To: LISTSERV@listserv.syr.edu Subject: Doesn't matter Text/body of: set novell NODIgest The NOVELL list now defaults to a digestified form, so that you get a day's worth of list traffic in one message. This change was done in 1994 to ease the mainframe's task of managing this list. To change to receiving list mail in a digest format, send the following mail to the LISTSERV: To: LISTSERV@listserv.syr.edu Subject: Doesn't matter Text/body of: set novell digest If you're in need to see all possible commands use: To: LISTSERV@listserv.syr.edu Text/body of: INFO REFCARD [Thx A.B.] B.3 Posting a message to the list The address of this list is: NOVELL@listserv.syr.edu To post a message, all you need to do is send it as a mail note to the above address. Please see the etiquette rules (Question B.5) before you post a message. B.4 List sysops The sysops of the NOVELL@listserv.syr.edu mailing list include: Larry Bradley larry.bradley@nrc.ca Scott Campbell novell-request@listserv.syr.edu Joe Doupnik jrd@cc.usu.edu Glenn Fund fund@relay.proteon.com David Harris david@pmail.gen.nz Dave Molta djmolta@sunrise.syr.edu David A. Cantrell david_cantrell@novell.com Art Whittman wittman@engr.wisc.edu [Thx Joe D.] B.5 Guidelines to network etiquette Remember, about a thousand people around the world read this list, and all of us think our time is valuable, as do you. Also, every message posted uses a great deal of computer and transmission time, because it is propagating around the world. Therefore, the polite user of this list will try to follow these guidelines: * Do not post subscribe/unsubscribe requests to the list. See how to do these tasks above, question B.2. * Do not post test messages to the list. The first time you have a substantial post, let that be your test. If you keep the file, you won't have to retype it in the event that for some reason it doesn't go through the first time. * Do not post "Is this list working?" messages to the list. E-mail links between computers may go down for some reason and it is much more likely that a link between you and the Internet has gone down than the list itself has gone down. If you ask, you should ask one of the list's sysops. See question B.4 for a list of the sysops. * Consult Novell, system, and application documentation before you post a question. Also, if your site has a computer support staff that deals with Novell issues (many universities do), consult with them before posting a question. * When you post to the list, please include an informative and accurate Subject: line. The traffic on this list is very high; this helps those people who have time only to read posts they may be able to help with, or that apply to their networks. Additionally, in your post, make sure to include all of the information people will need to respond. * If you post a question, and receive no response, please don't repost it. The people who read this list are very helpful--someone will answer the question if they can. If you don't receive an answer, you need to find professional consultants for your specific problem. Reposting will not get an answer, and will only waste the time and bandwidth mentioned above. * The purpose of this mailing list is to serve as a resource from which all participants can learn. Therefore, if you think an answer to a question will be of wider interest than the just the asker, please post it to the list (the default reply-to address) and/or the FAQ maintainer, John Lyon . * Don't flame people. If some information is presented that is incorrect or incomplete, please do post a message offering the correction. But don't make personal attacks on the list members. That has no place on this list. * Include your email address at the bottom of your postings. This will allow people to correspond directly with you, since most mail systems, by default, normally default your reply to the entire list. * If you use a signature, please make it no longer than four lines, and don't include "graphics" composed of ASCII characters. Remember, everyone's time is valuable, and some people read this mailing list at a very slow baud rate and/or pay for their connection "by the pound". Long signatures, and frivolous graphics just frustrate them; they may take to deleting your messages unread. * When you reply to a message, include just enough of the previous message for readers to remember what the issues were. It is not necessary to include the whole message again and is expensive for those mentioned above. * When you post a message, use proper upper *and* lower case. In the eWorld, all uppercase text is considered SHOUTING and uppercase messages are much harder to read. People may just delete or skip your messages without even giving them a chance. * Please post to the list *only* in English. If you are posting in any other language, obviously you did not intend to communicate with the entire list, as this is an English language list. Therefore, private email would be more appropriate. * Do not post lines longer than 77 characters. Some mailers do not handle long lines well. When quoted, these lines grow, compounding the problem. Failing to head this advice could cause you to receive, from S.M.D., your own copy of the following humorous note: Please use your Return or Enter key _before_ you reach 80 chara cters. Otherwise, your article becomes very difficult to read. If it is very diffic ult to read, then people are less likely to read it. If less people read it, y ou are not as likely to get the responses you desire. * If you reply to a message on the list, consider if you should reply to the entire list or to the sender (a private reply). It's a good idea to reply privately if you ask a question of the sender, or if you are thanking someone or if the sender asks for a private reply. You should consider replying to the list if the reply is of general interest or if you are contributing to an ongoing discussion. B.6 Other useful mailing lists/newsgroups Other mailing lists you may want to try are include: * BANYAN-L@akronvm (internet BANYAN@vm1.cc.uakron.edu), send subscriptions to LISTSERV@akronvm (internet LISTSERV@vm1.cc.uakron.edu). This is for discussion of Banyan networks. * BIG-LAN@suvm (internet BIG-LAN@suvm.acs.syr.edu), send subscriptions to the LISTSERV@suvm (internet LISTSERV@suvm.acs.syr.edu). * CICA-L@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu for announcements of Windows uploads to CICA. To subscribe, send mail to LISTSERV@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu with the message SUBSCRIBE CICA-L Firstname Lastname. * CUTCP-L@nstn.ns.ca for a discussion of Charon and CUTCP Telnet issues. Send subscription requests to LISTSERV@nstn.ns.ca. * Garbo-Ann@Garbo.uwasa.fi for announcements of Garbo uploads. To subscribe, send mail to Majordomo@Garbo.uwasa.fi with the message SUBSCRIBE GARBO-ANN Firstname Lastname. * MSDOS-ANN@@SimTel.Coast.NET for announcements of SimTel uploads. To subscribe, send mail to LISTSERV@SimTel.Coast.NET with the message SUBSCRIBE MSDOS-ANN. * MSMAIL-L@YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU for Microsoft Mail. To subscribe, send mail to LISTSERV@YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU with a text/body message of SUBSCRIBE MSMAIL-L Firstname Lastname * IntranetWare News Info list. To sub, send email to intranetwarenews@novell.com with a text/body line of subscribe intranetwarenews [your_e-mail_address] [Thx Robert Sfeir and Steve Sathue] * NGW@lists.teltrust.com for discussion on Novell's GroupWise. To subscribe, send mail to majordomo@lists.teltrust.com with text/body line of "subscribe NGW ". For help, send email to: ngw-admin@teltrust.com. [Thx Trevor Harrison for this info] * NWP@lists.pipex.com for programming under Netware. Send email to listproc@lists.pipex.com with any subject line and text/body of subscribe NWP FirstName LastName * PMAIL@ua1vm.ua.edu for discussion of Pegasus Mail. The author, David Harris, is active on this list. Send subscription and other administrative requests to LISTSERV@ua1vm.ua.edu. * WFW-L@umdd.umd.edu for Windows For Workgroups. Send subscription and other administrative requests to LISTSERV@umdd.umd.edu. * Windows-nt@mailbase.ac.uk. Send the command JOIN Windows-nt firstname lastname to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk. I also recommend you issue the command SEND mailbase user-guide to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk if you do join up. Additionally, if you have access to usenet news, you may want to subscribe to the newsgroup comp.os.netware.misc, which is a "mirror" of this mailing list but you may not be able to post messages to this list if you are only subscribed to the newsgroup (you can subscribe to the list, and then set your subscription to NOMAIL, and thus be able to post questions [or answers!] to the list. There are also the following newsgroups: comp.os.netware.announce (moderated announcements) comp.os.netware.security (security issues) comp.os.netware.connectivity (connect. issues incl. LAN Workplace) comp.os.netware.misc (topics not falling into the above categories) [Thx J.B., Bengt Bolinder and S.M.D. for this info] For more comprehensive sources of mailing lists on all subjects, on info.umd.edu (128.8.10.29) you can find a list of listserv bitnet lists under /inforM/inforM/CompRes/NetInfo/Listserv/listserv-lists and the complete List of Lists is available as /inforM/inforM/CompRes/NetInfo/Internet/interest-groups. [Thanks to Chaisiri Wongkham for updating this info] Also, sending any listserv the command "list global" will get you a large (750k to 1MB) file of all public listserv lists. For a searchable directory of mailing lists that IS the world's largest, check out: http://www.liszt.com/ [Thx to Scott Southwick for this info] For similar searches spanning mailing lists, newsgroups, vendors, and FTP sites, try: http://www.tile.net/ [Thanks to Mark Holland for this info] B.7 Archived messages from the mailing list [As of 01/31/97] The ability to search the NOVELL archive logs is again available. The old VM style search functions are not supported. There is a new user-oriented LISTSERV manual available at: http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/userindex.html OR ftp://ftp.lsoft.com/ftp/documents [Thx Glenn A. Malling for this info] There is an HTML Archive (begun 5 Sep 1996) of Novell List messages, sorted by date, thread, subject & author, at: http://www.dfm.dtu.dk/netware/nov-lst/ NOTE: This archive could be better if the subject field was used properly in messages posted to the NOVELL list. [Thx S.R.] Also, see Section S for archives on selected topics. C. ARCHIVES OF USEFUL FILES C.1 How do I get to the archives? All the archives mentioned in this FAQ list are accessible by using FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Your network must be connected to the Internet to reach these archive servers. Contact your local computer centre if you are not sure if you are connected to the Internet. Not all organisations offer unrestricted access to the Internet, so you may need to use a specific computer in your organisation to reach the FTP servers. Your local computer centre should be able to advise you of any restrictions. To access an FTP server, issue the following command: ftp servername where servername is the name of your target FTP server (eg risc.ua.edu). You may need to use the IP number of the server instead (eg 130.60.4.7). Once you have connected to the server, you will be asked for your login name -- use anonymous. In many cases you will then be asked for a password. You should use your e-mail address for this. Different versions of FTP have different commands, so it is advisable to contact your local support staff for detailed information on how your FTP software operates. Novell has also established a World Wide Web server at: http://www.novell.com As of March 31, 1995 Novell has made available manuals for NetWare, UnixWare, and the NetWare SDK via this site. The manuals include the complete text of some 110,000 pages of Novell technical documentation in five languages plus more than 14,000 illustrations. C.2 Official FTP sites for Novell files Novell has designated several FTP sites around the world as "official" mirrors of the Novell FTP server. These sites are updated at least once a week from the server in Utah. The mirrored FTP sites are available through the Internet as well as through other mechanisms like JANET in the UK and BBS systems in the Netherlands. In addition to the files from ftp.novell.com these servers may contain other useful information for managers of Novell networks. This is a list of the mirrors, their URLs, IP addresses and directories. BNUG FTP server ftp://bnug.harvard.edu *128.103.85.201* University of Groningen ftp://ftp.rug.nl/networks/novell *129.125.4.15* This server is updated daily. It is also available via BITNET and BBS (indirect) University of Salford ftp://ftp.salford.ac.uk/novell *146.87.255.21* Also available via JANET IP Utah State University ftp://netlab2.usu.edu *129.123.1.44* For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp Dir: /sys/anonftp subdirectories follow novell FTP. Index is in the top level directory in each. Also available via BITNET, SPAN, Gopher (gopher.usu.edu) Lincoln University ftp://tui.lincoln.ac.nz/novell/novlib *138.75.90.4* University of Alabama ftp://risc.ua.edu/pub/network/novlib *130.160.4.7* Also available via BITNET National Research Council (Canada) ftp://novell.nrc.ca/netwire *132.246.160.4* (Actually mirrors nightly from Joe D.'s netlab2.usu.edu, thus Joe's WHATIS files, for example, are also on this mirror) United Kingdom ftp://ftp.novell.co.uk/pub/ United Kingdom ftp://ftp.mechnet.liv.ac.uk [Thanks to Steven Carpenter for this info] So how to find things on Novell's master FTP server (or on Netwire, Novell's Compuserve forum)? First obtain a copy of FORUM.DOS, packaged as either forum.zip or forum.exe typically in forum 01. That's a good summary but not always up to date nor explicit about filenames within archives. The Netwire archive changes daily. A full listing of the contents of each archive file, via Pkunzip,is the set of text files WHATIS.xxx in the Netwire directory on netlab2.usu.edu. "xxx" is the name of the forum, 01 etc. That suite is regenerated every week or two. The time/date stamp is shown for each file within a .zip/.exe archive. The Netwire archive contains over 1000 files totaling 100+MB, most are .zip/.exe collections. Thus if things were unpacked there would be tens of thousands of files. The archive is divided into forums with special purposes. Forum Novfiles contains hot items which will be moved to the numbered forums in due course. One is very unlikely to find files named RCONSOLE.NLM or similar in the archive as bare files; instead those will be within .zip/.exe archives of arbitrary filenames. Most Netwire files are self-extracting archives, to be found with .EXE extensions. For Rconsole, see netwire\novlib\04\rcnsle.exe, where the latest Rconsole material resides. Here is a cutout from netwire\whatis.04: Searching ZIP: NOVLIB/04/RCNSLE.EXE Length Method Size Ratio Date Time Name ------ ------ ----- ----- ---- ---- ---- 9147 Implode 3052 67% 04-17-91 10:36 RCONSOLE.HLP 83391 Implode 45356 46% 06-19-91 13:15 RCONSOLE.EXE 3042 Implode 1451 53% 08-26-91 10:00 READ.ME ------ ------ --- ------- 95580 49859 48% 3 To be complete, "Netwire" is formally the Novell area of Compuserve. The Novell owned files are placed on ftp.novell.com for anonymous ftp access. That is mirrored by a small number of official sites. At last, many of the user-contributed files to NetWire (Compuserve) are now available via anonymous ftp from your favorite mirror of Netwire, including from ftp.novell.com. See directory netwire\novuser which has 12 subdirectories 01..12 (11 and 12 are empty right now). File netwire\novuser\Index and text files netwire\novuser\whatis.xx (xx = 01..12) on netlab2 indicate the nature of each directory and the contents of each zip'd archive, respectively. A variety of archiving methods have been used by contributors, so don't expect PKUNZIP to work on all. Here is the big picture of the novuser area (file Index): User contributed material from Compuserve, Netwire\novuser NOVUSER Library Sections 1) New Uploads 2) Disk Drivers/Patches 3) LAN Drivers/Patches 4) Comm Drvs/Patches 5) Host/Unix Dvrs/Ptch 6) Printer Utils 7) Network (Sys) Utils 8) Client WS Utils 9) Management Tools 10) Text Files/Help 11) Job Postings 12) Classifieds The following is a list of indices for novell software on ftp.novell.com and mirrors: /netwire/novfiles/novfil.idx /netwire/novlib/01/forum.* (may be in /02/) /netwire/novlib/01/novchg.txt (may be in /02/) /netwire/novuser/01/taplib.exe /netwire/novuser/01/tapusr.exe /netwire/novuser/01/titles.exe On the netlab2.usu.edu only mirror, you can also find the following: /netwire/novuser/Index /netwire/novuser/whatis.* /netwire/versions/novlib04.ver /netwire/versions/novlib05.ver /netwire/versions/novlib06.ver ftp.novell.com is being moved away from the netwire library concept. The managers of ftp.novell.com advise that users should familiarise themselves with the pub2 directory tree. Information for the pub2 tree can be found in /pub2/00DIR. Each subdirectory in /pub2 also has a 00DIR index file. C.2.1 Official GOPHER site for Novell files and Information Novell has established an excellent Gopher-based site. It is must faster than the www site and is located at: http://support.novell.com The links on this site are just about everything a Netware support person could ever want or need. Explore! C.3 Other useful FTP sites Useful ftp sites, along with their Novell related directories include: ftp://splicer2.cba.hawaii.edu/files/novell ftp://splicer2.cba.hawaii.edu/files/pegasus *128.171.17.2* ftp://cc.usu.edu/slip ftp://cc.usu.edu/tcp-ip *129.123.1.1* ftp://risc.ua.edu/pub/network/novlib ftp://risc.ua.edu/pub/network/pegasus ftp://risc.ua.edu/pub/network/misc ftp://risc.ua.edu/pub/network/tcpip *130.160.4.7* ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/etc/system/novell *128.252.135.4* ftp://ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/novell *131.246.9.95* ftp://netlab.usu.edu/novell ftp://netlab.usu.edu/netwatch *129.123.1.11* ftp://chaos.cc.ncsu.edu/share/pc/novell ftp://chaos.cc.ncsu.edu/share/pc/utils ftp://chaos.cc.ncsu.edu/share/pc/email ftp://chaos.cc.ncsu.edu/share/pc/net ftp://chaos.cc.ncsu.edu/share/pc/manage *152.1.19.23* ftp://ftp.novell.de/pub/NetWire ftp://ftp.novell.de/pub/unix ftp://ftp.novell.de/pub/unixware ftp://ftp.novell.de/pub/drdos ftp://ftp.novell.de/pub/sjf-lwp *193.97.1.1* [Thanks to Mark Burgess and David Silverstein for this info] C.4 Current NetWare program version numbers/dates Information about the Novell NetWare software version numbers. This file is created with NW311REV version 1.10 at 2-20-1995. You may also wish to load CONLOG.NLM early in your AUTOEXEC.NCF (and then unload it near the end of AUTOEXEC.NCF). CONSOLE.NLM will then capture all console output from the server initialization process and create a file called CONSOLE.LOG in the sys:\etc directory that you can print/study to determine the actual version number, etc. of the NLMs you are currently running. CONLOG can be obtained from ftp.mechnet.liv.ac.uk Note: CONLOG auto-loads CLIB.NLM so make sure that you have specified your timezone stuff and loaded CLIB before loading CONLOG (see Joe D.'s AUTOEXEC.NCF file in section C.9.2 below). [Thx Joe D.] On the other hand, CONFIG.NLM has the advantage that it can be loaded after all other NLMs are already loaded and it will give you detailed information of your server and modules. ftp://ftp.novell.com/.../tabnd1.exe [Thx D.T.] Also, try: http://www.novell.com/ServSupp/ServSupp.html C.4.1 Current NetWare program version numbers/dates in SYS:PUBLIC Novell software version numbers in SYS:PUBLIC ACONSOLE.EXE 3.75 8-06-1993 3:13p ALLOW.EXE 3.75 5-06-1993 5:00p ATTACH.EXE 3.75 5-11-1993 1:58p BCONSOLE.EXE ?.?? 2-11-1991 12:00a BREQUEST.EXE ?.?? 12-09-1993 9:08a BROLLFWD.EXE ?.?? 10-11-1993 2:08p CAPTURE.EXE 3.75 5-20-1993 2:59p CASTOFF.EXE 3.75 4-12-1993 5:05p CASTON.EXE 3.75 4-12-1993 3:48p CHKDIR.EXE 3.75 4-14-1993 8:24a CHKVOL.EXE 3.75 5-06-1993 3:45p COLORPAL.EXE 1.02 10-20-1987 9:33a DSPACE.EXE 3.75 4-14-1993 2:50p ENDCAP.EXE 1.00 7-19-1989 10:55a FCONSOLE.EXE 3.76 (940215) PTF 3-24-1994 9:08a FILER.EXE 3.76 8-11-1993 4:05p FLAG.EXE 3.75 5-06-1993 3:26p FLAGDIR.EXE 3.75 4-12-1993 1:52p GRANT.EXE 3.75 5-06-1993 11:37a LISTDIR.EXE 3.75 4-14-1993 3:51p LOGIN.EXE 3.75 5-04-1993 3:06p LOGOUT.EXE 3.75 4-12-1993 9:52a MAKEUSER.EXE 3.75 4-13-1993 1:57p MAKLOCAL.EXE ?.?? 2-11-1991 12:00a MAP.EXE 3.75 5-07-1993 9:07a NBACKUP.EXE 3.50 1-13-1993 8:48a NCOPY.EXE 3.75 4-16-1993 8:43a NDIR.EXE 3.75 4-13-1993 1:24p NPRINT.EXE 3.75 5-05-1993 9:29a NVER.EXE 3.75 4-20-1993 11:11a PCONSOLE.EXE 3.75 5-06-1993 4:26p PRINTCON.EXE ?.?? 5-24-1993 1:50p PRINTDEF.EXE 3.75 5-04-1993 2:34p PSC.EXE 3.75 5-24-1993 3:03p PSERVER.EXE 3.76 8-11-1993 3:02p PSTAT.EXE 2.00 2-11-1991 12:00a PURGE.EXE 3.76 8-04-1993 3:05p REMOVE.EXE 3.75 4-14-1993 9:46a RENDIR.EXE 3.75 4-14-1993 9:16a REVOKE.EXE 3.75 4-14-1993 5:07p RIGHTS.EXE 3.75 4-12-1993 7:29p RPRINTER.EXE 3.75 5-04-1993 2:31p SALVAGE.EXE 3.75 4-13-1993 10:03a SEND.EXE 3.75 6-01-1993 5:11p SESSION.EXE 3.76 (940718) PTF 7-19-1994 10:03a SETPASS.EXE 3.75 4-19-1993 10:55a SETTTS.EXE 3.75 4-14-1993 4:55p SLIST.EXE 3.75 4-14-1993 5:05p SMODE.EXE 3.75 4-14-1993 12:35a SYSCON.EXE 3.75 5-10-1993 12:27a SYSTIME.EXE 3.75 4-14-1993 5:16p TLIST.EXE 3.75 4-12-1993 1:43p USERDEF.EXE 3.75 5-05-1993 7:58a USERLIST.EXE 3.75 5-06-1993 10:59a VERSION.EXE 3.75 5-06-1993 9:15a VOLINFO.EXE 3.75 4-14-1993 3:16p WANGTEK.EXE 3.50 2-11-1991 12:00a WHOAMI.EXE 3.75 4-13-1993 12:22a [Thx H.K.] Also, try: http://www.novell.com/ServSupp/ServSupp.html C.4.2 Current NetWare program version numbers/dates in SYS:LOGIN Novell software version numbers in SYS:LOGIN LOGIN.EXE 3.75 5-04-1993 3:06p SLIST.EXE 3.75 4-14-1993 5:05p [Thx H.K.] C.4.3 Current NetWare program version numbers/dates in SYS:SYSTEM Novell software version numbers in SYS:SYSTEM ACONSOLE.EXE 3.75 8-06-1993 3:13p ATOTAL.EXE 3.75 5-10-1993 4:34p BINDFIX.EXE 3.75 4-27-1993 9:37a BINDREST.EXE 3.75 4-16-1993 3:15p BROLLFWD.EXE ?.?? 6-24-1991 3:36p DOSGEN.EXE 1.20 (930419) 4-19-1993 6:37p PAUDIT.EXE 3.75 4-14-1993 4:36p RCONSOLE.EXE 3.75 8-06-1993 3:13p RSETUP.EXE ?.?? 9-05-1990 4:00p SECURITY.EXE 3.75 4-14-1993 10:23a WANGTEK.EXE 3.50 11-12-1990 9:54a WSUPDATE.EXE 3.75 4-27-1993 3:29p [Thx H.K.] Also, try: http://www.novell.com/ServSupp/ServSupp.html C.4.4 Current NetWare NLM version numbers/dates in SYS:SYSTEM NLM version numbers in SYS:SYSTEM 2XUPGRDE.NLM 1.10 6-01-1993 1:44p 3CBOOT.NLM 1.03 9-30-1991 2:32p A3112.NLM 4.10 3-29-1994 1:49p ADAPTEC.NLM ?.?? 2-13-1991 5:07p AFTER311.NLM 4.10 3-29-1994 1:48p AIO.NLM 5.00 6-11-1993 2:00p AIOACI.NLM 1.00 12-17-1992 12:14a AIOCOMX.NLM 2.00 12-17-1992 12:09a AIOCXCFG.NLM 1.01 12-15-1992 8:08a AIODGCX.NLM 1.01 12-15-1992 8:09a AIODGMEM.NLM 1.00 12-15-1992 8:07a AIODGXI.NLM 1.03 12-14-1992 2:13p AIOESP.NLM 1.00 1-28-1993 6:45p AIOWNIM.NLM 1.00 1-28-1993 7:56p BCONSOLE.NLM ?.?? 6-27-1991 2:20p BDIRECT.NLM 6.10 1-26-1993 3:00p BDROUTER.NLM 6.10 5-17-1993 3:48p BREBUILD.NLM 1.10 8-26-1993 1:32p BROUTER.NLM 6.10 8-27-1993 10:24a BSETUP.NLM 6.10 1-07-1993 11:04a BSPXCOM.NLM 6.10 11-24-1993 10:40a BSPXSTUB.NLM 6.10 5-20-1993 3:51p BTRIEVE.NLM 6.10 11-19-1993 9:48a BTRMON.NLM 6.10 1-28-1993 2:25p BTRVSTUB.NLM 6.10 8-27-1993 10:32a BURGLAR.NLM ?.?? 3-02-1992 11:30a BUTIL.NLM 6.10 10-25-1993 5:16p CDROM.NLM 3.12 6-09-1993 4:22p CLIB.NLM 3.12 5-19-1994 10:27a CONLOG.NLM 1.00 4-05-1993 4:06p DIBIDAI.NLM 3.12 6-11-1993 4:12p DIRECTFS.NLM 1.08 7-14-1993 3:46p DISKSET.NLM 3.11 2-14-1991 9:02a DPTSIM.NLM 0.00 6-09-1993 2:23p EDIT.NLM ?.?? 8-29-1990 1:25p ETHERRPL.NLM 1.02 1-21-1991 11:12a ETHERTSM.NLM 2.50 11-29-1994 3:34p FDDITSM.NLM 2.13 7-07-1993 5:07p INSTALL.NLM 1.57 8-17-1993 10:23a IPCONFIG.NLM 2.02 2-22-1993 12:35a IPXS.NLM 3.12 4-19-1993 8:35a KEYB.NLM 1.00 7-15-1993 10:15a LLC8022.NLM 4.50 12-13-1992 2:06p MATHLIB.NLM 3.12 5-19-1994 9:12a MATHLIBC.NLM 3.12 5-19-1994 9:11a MONITOR.NLM 1.75 10-26-1992 9:21a MSM31X.NLM 2.50 11-23-1994 11:41a NFSFIX.NLM 2.00 3-04-1993 4:37p NFSSHIM.NLM 2.00 4-19-1993 4:05p NLICLEAR.NLM 1.04 5-24-1991 12:17a NMAGENT.NLM 1.11 8-12-1991 11:12a NOVADIBI.NLM 0.00 3-31-1992 12:08a NUT.NLM 1.13 12-20-1990 8:18a NWSNUT.NLM 4.10 6-02-1994 4:48p PCN2LTSM.NLM 2.08 1-30-1993 11:32a PFIXUP.NLM 1.01 4-30-1993 5:19p PING.NLM 1.00 1-29-1993 1:13p PINSTALL.NLM 2.01 5-07-1993 6:07p PM312.NLM 1.21 3-24-1994 11:06a PROTO.NLM ?.?? 2-09-1991 8:36a PSERVER.NLM 3.76 8-11-1993 3:19p REMFILFX.NLM 2.00 4-19-1993 4:19p REMOTE.NLM 3.12 5-13-1993 3:13p ROUTE.NLM 3.12 5-01-1991 8:14a RPL.NLM 4.05 4-09-1993 9:37a RS232.NLM 1.30 2-09-1991 7:02a RSPX.NLM 3.12 3-29-1993 5:04p RSPXSTUB.NLM 6.10 5-20-1993 3:51p RXNETTSM.NLM 2.05 1-06-1993 10:04a SBACKUP.NLM 3.12 5-18-1993 8:02a SMDR31X.NLM 4.00 6-15-1993 10:23a SNMP.NLM 2.08 4-06-1993 3:44p SNMPLOG.NLM 2.00 4-05-1993 3:45p SPXCONFG.NLM 1.00 2-12-1991 10:35a SPXS.NLM 3.12 4-19-1993 8:26a STREAMS.NLM 3.12 4-19-1993 8:32a TAPEDC00.NLM ?.?? 2-13-1991 4:37p TCPCON.NLM 2.02 1-29-1993 1:12p TCPIP.NLM 2.02 2-22-1993 12:34a TLI.NLM 3.12 4-19-1993 8:38a TOKENRPL.NLM 1.02 1-21-1991 11:29a TOKENTSM.NLM 2.50 11-23-1994 11:55a TPING.NLM 1.00 1-29-1993 1:13p TSA.NLM ?.?? 2-15-1991 5:03p TSA311.NLM 4.01 6-04-1993 10:59a TSA312.NLM 4.01 6-04-1993 10:54a TSA_DOS.NLM 4.01 6-09-1993 4:30p UINSTALL.NLM 3.11 12-14-1990 2:40p UPS.NLM 1.11 12-18-1990 7:57a VREPAIR.NLM 3.12 5-04-1993 12:50a V_MAC.NLM 1.01 12-10-1990 7:06a V_OS2.NLM 1.01 12-10-1990 7:10a WANGTEK.NLM 3.11 7-18-1991 3:37p WS_MAN.NLM 4.01 6-08-1993 4:04p [Thx H.K.] Also, try: http://www.novell.com/ServSupp/ServSupp.html C.4.4.1 WWW Site maintaining a list of most current NLMs http://mft.ucs.ed.ac.uk/novell/techsup/nlmver.htm [Thx G.J.S.] C.4.5 Current VLM Client Kit program version numbers/dates VLMs : ------ AUTO.VLM 1.20 8/11/94 BIND.VLM 1.20 8/11/94 CONN.VLM 10837 02-14-95 8:08a CONN.VLM 1.20 8/11/94 FIO.VLM 1.20 8/11/94 GENERAL.VLM 1.20 8/11/94 IPXNCP.VLM 1.20 8/11/94 TRAN.VLM 1.20 8/11/94 SECURITY.VLM 1.20 8/11/94 PNW.VLM 1.10 9/12/93 MIB2IF.VLM 1.00 17/08/93 MIB2PROT.VLM 1.00 17/08/93 NDS.VLM 1.20 8/11/94 NETX.VLM 4.20 8/11/94 NMR.VLM 1.10 9/12/93 NWP.VLM 6648 02-14-95 8:11a PNWMIB.VLM 1.10 30/11/93 PNWTRAP.VLM 1.10 30/11/93 PRINT.VLM 1.20 8/11/94 REDIR.VLM 14793 01-17-95 11:51a REDIR.VLM 1.20 8/11/94 RSA.VLM 1.20 8/11/94 WSASN1.VLM 1.10 17/08/93 WSREG.VLM 1.10 17/08/93 WSSNMP.VLM 1.10 17/08/93 WSTRAP.VLM 1.10 17/08/93 These are the latest, after the Novell Dos upgrades and P10U05 upgrade. [Thanks to Chris Clemson and Hans Nellissen for this info] On August 14, 1995, Novell released the full VLM update kit, v1.20a with TCP/IP stack, as six files at: ftp://ftp.novell.com/pub/updates/nwos/dsclnt12 OR ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/pub/updates/nwos/dsclnt12 For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/pub/updates/nwos/dsclnt12 OR ftp://...YOUR LOCAL MIRROR.../pub/updates/nwos/dsclnt12 File detail is as follows: CLIENT.TXT 5,099 02-07-95 6:07p <-- Obsolete, disregard. VLMKT1.EXE 864,039 08-07-95 9:35p VLMKT2.EXE 493,055 08-07-95 9:38p VLMKT3.EXE 1,062,892 08-07-95 9:44p VLMKT4.EXE 786,173 08-07-95 9:50p VLMKT5.EXE 899,874 08-07-95 9:53p VLMKT6.EXE 541,844 08-07-95 9:57p [Thx Joe D. and Paul Menius] From the 95 March issue of Novell App Notes says: "If you are running a version of the DOS Requestor earlier than version 1.20, or if you are running a version of VNETWARE.386 dated earlier than 8-17-94, you will need to set add a TimerCriticalSection=10000 entry to the [386 Enh] section SYSTEM.INI. The VNETWARE.386 driver for the DOS Requestor 1.20 defaults to 1000, which better supports mobile products." [Thanks to George Nesto for this info] C.5 Current Personal NetWare program version numbers/dates NET.EXE 1.00 17/08/93 DPMS 1.30 15/11/94 LSL.COM 2.05 10/09/93 IPXODI.COM 2.12 1/10/93 SERVER.EXE 1.23 13/07/94 VLM.EXE 1.20 8/11/94 [Thanks to Chris Clemson for this info] C.6 NetWare Patches and Updates FAQ location This FAQ lists the locations of patches and updates to Netware related applications. It can be accessed at: ftp://ftp.nsm.smcm.edu/pub/novell/patchfaq.zip OR http://www.nsm.smcm.edu/News/Netware/PatchFaq.html NOTE: The WWW version is updated more often. [Thanks to Stan Toney for this info] C.7 NetWare Free, Patching, Patches and Version FAQs locations A list of freeware NLMs is located at: http://mft.ucs.ed.ac.uk/novell/techsup/freenlms.htm A FAQ on patching a Netware server is located at: http://mft.ucs.ed.ac.uk/novell/techsup/patchfaq.htm A FAQ on NLM patches is located at: http://mft.ucs.ed.ac.uk/novell/techsup/nlmpatch.htm And an NLM version FAQ is located at: http://mft.ucs.ed.ac.uk/novell/techsup/nlmver.htm [Thx G.J.S.] C.8 Off-line alternatives There is a NetWare CD-ROM containing 2,141 Public Domain/Free/Shareware programs and a database of 450 commercial add-ons available from EMS Professional Shareware, 4505 Buckhurst Ct., Olney MD 20832-1830, (301) 924-3594, Fax (301) 963-2708, ems@wdn.com, http://www.xmission.com/~wwwads/ems C.9 Joe D.'s .NCF Files C.9.1 Joe D.'s Startup.NCF This is a NW 3.12 startup file. Your server is probably in c:\server.312. Aic7770 is for an Adaptec 2742AT SCSI controller. Tapedai.dsk is for tape backups, and so is the reserved buffers item. This is an EISA bus server. If yours is too then please pay attention to how I handle the 64 MB in this server. 5 GB disk farm on three spindles. set maximum alloc short term memory=32000000 set Minimum Packet Receive Buffers=100 set reserved buffers below 16 meg=200 set auto tts backout flag=on set ncp packet signature option=1 set replace console prompt with server name=OFF rem PATCH MANAGER AND PATCHES TO BE LOADED IN STARTUP.NCF LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\PM312 LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\BCKTTSFX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\BHANDFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\CTRSTKFX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\DHANDFX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\DIRSPCFX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\EAACCFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\EADATFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\EAFLTFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\EAREPLFX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\EASUBFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\EAWRITFX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\EAWRNFX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\ELEVFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\GNSFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\GTALLYFX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\HFFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\IOHANDFX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\IPXRCVFX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\LSLUNBFX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\LSTECBFX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\MMACCFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\PBWANFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\READQFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\REGOBJFX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\RKIELFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\SIGLOGFX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\SYNCMFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\TRBUFFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\RKIELFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\SIGLOGFX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\SYNCMFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\TRBUFFIX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\UNLDIRFX LOAD C:\NW312\PATCHES\WRLENFIX REM load aic7770 slot=3 verbose=y max_tags=10 max_nontags=2 load mac.nam load nfs.nam load tapedai [Thx Joe D.] C.9.2 Joe D.'s Autoexec.NCF Notes: uses NFS for NetWare, APC's Powerchute, Arcada Backup Exec, Pegasus Mail. MAC namespace on vol sysmac:, NFS namespace on vol sys:, NetWare Unix Client support (for my UnixWare netlab1 machine). file server name EDU-USU-NETLAB2 ipx internal net 817b012c set allow unencrypted passwords=on set reply to get nearest server=on set maximum directory cache buffers=300 set minimum directory cache buffers=275 set maximum outstanding NCP searches=1000 set maximum packet receive buffers=250 set timezone=MST7MDT load clib /L1 tz=MST7MDT /pb load conlog load nfsfix load mathlib rem load nmagent load tli load ipxs load spxs load ne3200 slot=1 frame=Ethernet_II name=bbone rem load ipxstack load ipxrtr routing=nlsp mcast=yes bind ipx bbone net=817b0100 nlsp=yes load remote password load rspx load pserver edu-usu-netlab2 load snmp ControlCommunity=password TrapCommunity=password load tcpip rip=no forward=no # [See note below for bind statements in general & the following] bind ip bbone ad=129.123.1.44 ma=255.255.255.0 ga=129.123.1.254 load rdate /p 60 /v 10 129.123.1.9 129.123.1.2 129.123.1.7 rem Appletalk v3.12, learn routes load ne3200 slot=1 frame=Ethernet_snap name=atbone load appletlk net=50006 zone={"CASS"} bind appletlk to atbone net=0-0 load afp rem search add sys:system\mercury load mercury load mercurys load mercuryc search delete 2 rem SEARCH ADD SYS:PWRCHUTE LOAD AIO LOAD AIOCOMX port=2f8 int=3 LOAD PWRCHUTE SYS:PWRCHUTE patch # Command to start LAN WorkGroup, NFS, and other products. load REMFILFX unistart mount all bestart unload conlog load monitor Joe's tips for bind statements, to save line length & in general: Use abbreviations for keywords and omit the optional keywords. Please see the manual for this, but ma= works for mask, no "to" is needed, and so on. DEF is not needed if GA= is used (gateway= static route to the "real router" and is the default route). Do NOT turn on RIP, please oh please. Omit ARP= too. Don't play around with your broadcast setting. As a live example, see below. It's much less than 80 columns. It's in the FAQ. [above]. load snmp ControlCommunity=password TrapCommunity=password load tcpip rip=no forward=no bind ip bbone ad=129.123.1.44 ma=255.255.255.0 ga=129.123.1.254 [Thx Joe D.] Another tip to save extra bytes on the bind line is to use hexadecimal instead of decimal numbers in the ad= ma= and ga= options. [Thanks to Joao Carlos Mendes Luis for this info] C.9.3 Joe D.'s Patch.NCF rem Patches from 312pt6.exe. Pm312 etc loaded in startup.ncf LOAD SYS:SYSTEM\PATCHES\DAICCFIX LOAD SYS:SYSTEM\PATCHES\DBLDEBFX LOAD SYS:SYSTEM\PATCHES\GLOCKFIX LOAD SYS:SYSTEM\PATCHES\REALMFIX LOAD SYS:SYSTEM\PATCHES\RTCHGFIX LOAD SYS:SYSTEM\PATCHES\SPXDDFIX LOAD SYS:SYSTEM\PATCHES\SPXFIX2 LOAD SYS:SYSTEM\PATCHES\SPXNSFIX LOAD SYS:SYSTEM\PATCHES\UNLOADFX LOAD SYS:SYSTEM\PATCHES\WSMSGFIX rem other modules rem LOAD SYS:SYSTEM\PATCHES\IPXSOCK 101 rem LOAD SYS:SYSTEM\PATCHES\SERVHOPS rem LOAD SYS:SYSTEM\PATCHES\SYNCTIME rem LOAD SYS:SYSTEM\PATCHES\RTRTIME [Thx Joe D.] C.9.4 Joe D.'s Selected update/patch files for NW 3.12 Selected update/patch files for NW 3.12, all in netwire: TCP188.EXE 155,161 11-10-94 10:43p PBURST.EXE 63,237 06-14-94 11:00p LIBUP5.EXE 657,851 04-24-95 4:30p LANDR4.EXE 238,838 03-24-95 7:02p SBACK3.EXE 280,023 04-26-95 3:42p 312PT6.EXE 74,614 04-07-95 4:21p RCONSL.EXE 68,819 05-26-95 9:09p STRTL3.EXE 172,277 07-31-94 11:00p CDROM3.EXE 117,609 07-11-94 11:00p IPXRT3.EXE 1,207,210 06-16-95 3:53p 312DU1.EXE 188,415 08-29-94 11:00p MAP312.EXE 48,964 03-13-95 6:57p AFP11 .EXE 90,487 01-30-95 5:27p SYS376.EXE 161,608 05-10-95 8:48p LOG376.EXE 74,768 03-09-95 11:40p PU3X01.EXE 453,054 11-16-94 4:48p [Thx Joe D.] D. NOVELL'S PHONE NUMBERS The following list of numbers was extracted from a list sent by Sarah Peterson of Novell to Larry Bradley, which he kindly posted to our mailing list. I have included in the FAQ because I believe it is of general interest. These numbers were accurate as of November 18, 1991. DEPARTMENT/GROUP TOLL-FREE REGULAR After Market Products (AMP) 800-346-7177 801-568-8856 Anthem/Eagle (Ethernet) 800-733-2453 408-453-1200 API Development/Austin 800-RED-WORD 512-794-1795 Authorized Reseller Information 800-828-3362 Contract Inquires/AMP 800-346-7177 801-568-8856 Corporate Headquarters 800-453-1267 801-429-7000 Customer Success Portfolios 800-UPDATE1 801-429-5155 Developer Assistance 800-729-4357 Reseller Authorization 800-828-3362 LANalyzer Products 800-243-8526 408-473-8324 Literature Orders 800-UPDATE1 801-429-5155 NetWare Users International 800-228-4NUI Novell Education 800-233-3382 Novell Education FaxBack 801-429-5363 OURS Program 800-237-OURS Professional Developers Program (PDP) 800-RED-WORD 512-794-1795 Piracy 800-PIRATES 801-429-7600 Product Information 800-NETWARE 801-429-5155 Promotional Products 800-526-4483 RMA 800-NETWARE Technical Marketing Support 800-733-9673 Technical Support 800-NETWARE 801-429-5588 Technical Support/PDP 800-SAY-HELP 512-794-1795 Upgrades/Updates 800-UPDATE1 801-429-5155 Warranty Registration 800-458-7773 Novell BBS 801-429-3030 [Thx L.C.H.] E. TCP/IP AND NETWARE E.1 What is TCP/IP TCP/IP is another networking protocol (like IPX) widely used in academic and commercial networks. It is used to allow different types of computers to communicate over a network. For further information, check out: http://www.futureone.com/~opeth/internetwork.html Also, check out the TCP/IP Transport Supervisor's Guide. [Thx H.B. & S.R.#2] "Daryl's TCP/IP Primer" is located at: http://ipprimer.windsorcs.com It is designed for people familiar with networking, but not necessarily familiar with TCP/IP networking. Includes a section on the differences between IPX and IP. [Thx D.B.#4] E.2 Why you might want TCP/IP and Netware to co-exist Many organisations have different types of computers on their networks. For example most universities have PCs and Unix or VAX computers on the network. Most Unix computers (and many others besides) use TCP/IP as a networking protocol. Also the Internet uses TCP/IP as its networking protocol. If your Netware PC users want to access Unix computers, they will most likely use TCP/IP and a package like telnet to do this. E.3 Packet drivers/ODI drivers/NDIS drivers Packet Drivers, ODI drivers, and NDIS drivers share a common purpose of recognizing packets coming in and distributing them to the appropriate piece of networking software as well as sending pre-built packets. Packet Drivers were first on the block once FTP Software realized the difficulty of writing complete drivers for every Ethernet board on the market. It's a short specification that does little more than hand out packets; consequently a Packet Driver is very small (about 2.5K in memory) but highly effective. 3Com/Microsoft came out with the NDIS specification to accomplish the same goal, but with many enhancements. The specification itself is very large and difficult to understand, and the code was the same way. NDIS is most commonly seen on Lan Manager systems (3Com, Microsoft, DEC, AT&T and so on). And, since Microsoft has of late taken to adding networking stuff in Windows products, those running Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95 or Windows NT as a network client will find themselves using NDIS, at least to some degree. [Thx S.M.D.] Then, most recently, Novell decided to tackle the board variety problem, but by starting from the top and looking down toward the hardware. Their ODI specification is the largest and most elaborate, and yet in many ways is the "best" of the bunch. There is a new version of the documentation describing ODI calls, tables, and functionality which are expressed in ANSI-C available at: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/odi/update/codidocs.zip For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/odi/update/codidocs.zip OR ftp://netlab1.usu.edu/pub/mirror/odi/update/codidocs.zip Both NDIS and ODI drivers are commercial endeavors, but their specifications are public. However, neither NDIS or ODI makes any effort to accommodate alternate ("competing") protocol stacks. This is changing with the appearance of small software converter "shims" which have a Packet Driver interface as the common denominator. Novell's Lan WorkPlace for DOS is a shining example of providing an ODI driver supporting both NetWare and TCP/IP. You can see the pressures here: software vendors want a cheap way of using many boards because drivers are expensive to write, and users want everything, including the ability to run things requiring dual protocol stacks on a single board. The commercial NDIS and ODI drivers should be more solid than the volunteer effort Packet Drivers, and correspondingly harder to get changed when bugs are found. NDIS and ODI drivers need to come from board vendors; Packet Drivers come, normally, from individuals and are distributed via Columbia University (you may get them by anonymous ftp from wuarchive.wustl.edu and many other sites). ODI is at this stage the driver type with the widest acceptance. It the only driver that Novell supports (IPX.COM, the monolithic shell or "driver" used before the introduction of ODI has long since been discontinued). [Thx Joe D.] E.3.1 LAN WorkPlace (and other) documents available from Novell via WWW The LAN WorkPlace 5.0, NetwareIP 2.1, NetWare NFS, Tuxedo RTK & SDK (and probably other) documents are now available on the Novell Publications Server at: http://www.novell.com (click on the "Manuals") E.4 Why can't multiple TCP/IP stacks run on a workstation? In order to understand this problem, assume that two TCP/IP applications ARE running on a workstation: when an IP packet arrives at a board with two or more TCP/IP stacks are active, the packet is delivered to each. Each stack now has a valid TCP or UDP (and maybe ICMP, ARP, or whatever) packet, and decodes the protocol type (TCP etc.), the operation kind, sequence number, and so on to fairly great detail. If the numbers happen to overlap with what another stack is doing then chaos will probably result--and if not the stack will likely send an error report back to the host and the connection will be aborted. The several parallel stacks are uncoordinated and thus fratricidal. In order to have multiple applications running in parallel, it is necessary that they be perfectly coordinated. How to do this? Simple: have one stack serving many applications. Each application gets a separate session identity within the stack and no conflicts can occur in properly written code; TCP/IP is designed for this. [Editor's note: unfortunately, there is no generally accepted sharable TCP/IP stack for PC workstations.] One well-known example of such a solution is Novell's LAN Workplace for DOS or Windows, which has a resident TCP/IP stack. Once you have the TCP/IP driver (and stack) loaded, you can load other applications (telnet, gopher etc) in tandem. This argument applies to every method of delivering packets to stacks: PD, ODI, NDIS, even carrier pigeon (there's a famous RFC for avian carriers). For readers with a technical interest in these things there are now three excellent books on TCP/IP: _Unix Network Programming_ by Stevens, and _Internetworking with TCP/IP_, volumes I and II, by Comer. Recently, a program named PKTMUX was written in the UK, which attempts to follow the detailed conversation between applications and their host; when multiple TCP programs are run over the same packet driver, it attempts to renumber the packet internals to avoid the conflicts noted above. It's a neat effort, but it cannot do the whole job. Under some conditions, it will work ok; under others we still get the effects described, so use it with caution. [Thx Joe D.] E.5 Routing TCP/IP through a file server If you use TCP/IP on two or more network adapters in a file server, chances are you want to route TCP/IP through the server (for example, you have one network adapter attaching to a room of PCs and the other attaching to your campus backbone). Each interface to which you bind TCP/IP has an IP address and a network mask. The combination of network mask, IP address and the destination field in a received IP packet determines whether that packet is routed through the server. As an example, let's assume your server attaches to two IP subnets, one with the address 137.43.101.0 (IP numbers between 137.43.101.1 and 137.43.101.255) and the other subnet with the address 137.43.102.0. Here is the IP configuration of the two network interfaces: IP address Network mask Driver 1: 137.43.101.1 255.255.255.0 Driver 2: 137.43.102.10 255.255.255.0 In Novell terms the bind configurations look like this: BIND IP TO DRIVER1 ADDR=137.43.101.1 MASK=255.255.255.0 BIND IP TO DRIVER2 ADDR=137.43.102.10 MASK=255.255.255.0 Note: You must also have LOAD TCPIP Forward=Yes in AUTOEXEC.NCF to setup the routing of IP-packages. This configuration will route packets from machines in 137.43.101.0 to 137.43.102.0 and vice versa. [Editor's note: these IP subnets are for example only. They actually exist in University College Dublin's IP network. If your IP network will connect to other networks you should apply for your own set of IP network addresses] DRIVER1 and DRIVER2 may be either driver types or aliases specified by the NAME= option when loading the driver. Novell's documentation kit includes extensive manuals which cover how to configure a server to route TCP/IP, as well as the concepts behind subnets. [Thanks to Amnat (Nat) Choeypatkul for some corrected info] E.5.1 Why TCP/IP Routing Doesn't Always Work As Expected The RFCs (Request For Comments, the papers which define Internet standards) governing IP addressing state that no portion of a node's address may consist of all zeros or of all ones. You can logically break down an address into two components where subnetting is not used (the network portion, defined by the address' class; and the node portion), and three components where subnetting is used (the network address; the subnetwork address, which is the difference between the subnetwork mask and the normal mask used for that address class; and the node address). Let's look at an example. Let's say we're subnetting a class B address, 166.166.0.0, into a number of class C-sized subnetworks. We would do this with a subnetwork mask of 255.255.255.0. This yields 254 networks, 166.166.1.0 through 166.166.254.0. We cannot use 166.166.0.0, as the subnetwork portion (the third octet) is all zeroes; similarly, we cannot use 166.166.255.0, as the subnetwork portion is all ones. Some equipment will allow you to use these illegal networks. Such equipment is providing an extension to the specificationss, and technically could be considered to be broken in that it does not behave according to the original specifications. Novell has released a version of MPR which permits the use of the all-zeroes subnet. Before using any all-zeroes or all-ones subnet, make sure you understand the applicable RFCs and are fully aware that you are "Off Spec". [Thx S.M.D.] There is a shareware program, SUBNET, that suggests appropriate masks based on the quantity of subnets and hosts per subnet; creates listings of subnets, directed broadcasts and host-ranges per the number of bits you tell it to use for subnetting (it then tells you what the mask should be). Lists include both binary and decimal displays and can be saved to disk as ASCII text or can be added to a database file (MS Access). The shareware version is limited to Class C addresses, the Deluxe version supports Class A - C addressing, including Variable Length Subnet Masks and Management tools for IP addresses. It needs VBRUN300.DLL. Author is Guy Michaud, gmichaud@cisco.com, and it can be downloaded at: http://www.futureone.com/~opeth/internetwork.html [Thx S.R.#2] E.5.2 Security considerations of allowing IP Source Routing IP source routing comes in loose and strict flavors...[A] bad guy on a far-away machine can send IP traffic to your place with a) source AND destination addresses at your place and b) an IP source route table which includes his far-away place. Naturally they have just tapped the wire and typically do not forward traffic back to the fake local destination. [The net effect is to] penetrate firewalls which are unaware of IP [source routing]. IP source routing is rarely used and can be turned off forever with really no loss. So turn it off on your major routers. [Thx Joe D.] E.6 Setting up a Netware server as an FTP server Novell's FTP server is bundled in both their Novell NFS package and their NetWare Flex/IP package. According to the May 11, 1992 press release when Novell announced NetWare Flex/IP, the "high performance FTP server allows UNIX users to transfer files to and from NetWare v3.11 servers on the network. It also enables FTP clients to use the NetWare v3.11 server as an FTP gateway to access any other NetWare server on the network, including those that do not support TCP/IP. The FTP server provides full support of both UNIX/NFS and DOS name spaces..." An alternate, and less expensive, solution is to run NCSA telnet in FTP server mode on a dedicated workstation--an old 8088 machine is perfectly suitable. (NCSA is available on many sites. The people ftp'ing into the workstation will have access to anything the account logged in on the workstation has access to. You can set up "accounts" and passwords, but the only thing this controls is who can ftp into the workstation. Additionally, only one ftp connection at a time is possible. In many cases, however, these restrictions will not be a problem. Yet another alternative solution is a third-party FTPD.NLM. Brad Clements (MurkWorks) has an FTP NLM available: ftp to ftp.msen.com to pick up a demo copy. This is not shareware: you must pay Brad a license fee to use the actual software (the demo is free). HELLSOFT in the Czech Republic also produce an FTPD NLM, available via anonymous ftp from Michal Meloun's ftp site novell.felk.cvut.cz. Michal Meloun can be reached at meloun@vision.felk.cvut.cz. Both products work under NetWare 4.x but in Bindery Emulation mode only. MurkWorks FTPD.NLM demo: ftp://ftp.msen.com/pub/vendor/murkworks/demos/ftpd/ftpdnlm.zip Hellsoft FTPD.NLM: ftp://novell.felk.cvut.cz:/nw311/ftpd/ftpd18.zip [Thanks to Steven Nygard for the info on Hellsoft] There are much less expensive alternatives like SDLPD from Secure Designs. SDLPD provides LPD & LPR services for a Novell file server via an NLM. Their web page is: http://www.peak.org/~sdesign [Thanks to John Villalovos for this info] E.7 BOOTP and RARP Bootp is a method by which a workstation can determine what ip number it should use and to find out what its nameservers and gateways are. If a workstation [using NCSA or CUTCP] runs telnet or ftp and has the myip variable in its config.tel file set to bootp, it will send out a broadcast on the network. A bootp server somewhere will see this broadcast, and respond to it with the ip number the workstation should use and what its nameserver and gateways are. The advantage is that all ip numbers, nameserver, and gateway information are kept in one file on the bootp server. You can get LPD.EXE at: ftp://tacky.cs.olemiss.edu/pub/lpd/ncsa/lpd.exe This will do bootp as well as lpd. You do not need a state of the art workstation to run this program. BOOTP is also available on lancaster.andrew.cmu.edu. [Thanks to Dan Abts for this info] Jocelyn Nadeau has informed me that the documentation for lpd doesn't indicate that it performs BOOTP; however, you can find BOOTP.ZIP and BOOTPNOS.ZIP as follows: ftp://ftp.ci.cuslm.ca/public/network/bootp.zip ftp://ftp.ci.cuslm.ca/public/network/bootpnos.zip *142.17.2.244* Another BOOTP server is BOOTPD.NLM from Hellsoft, available as follows: ftp://novell.felk.cvut.cz/nw311/ftpd/bootpd18.zip *192.108.160.5* or ftp://ftp.salford.ac.uk/network/nlms/bootpd18.zip (needs resolv.nlm) ftp://ftp.salford.ac.uk/network/nlms/bootpfwd.nlm (bootp forwarder) You'll need the Hellsoft name resolver NLM as well, available as follows: ftp://novell.felk.cvut.cz:/nw311/resolv/resolv13.zip [Thanks to David Gersic and J.P. for this info] Rarp is similar in function to bootp, but is less sophisticated. As with bootp, the workstation sends out a broadcast request for an IP number. If a rarp server picks up this request it will respond with an IP number for the requesting workstation. No other information is returned (this is one major difference between bootp and rarp). If your workstations use NCSA or Clarkson TCP/IP software, you can get them to use rarp by specifying the MYIP variable to be RARP. Many Unix machines come equipped with a rarp server and PC versions are available from ftp servers. One drawback with rarp is that it doesn't use IP packets: rarp is an ethernet protocol all to itself. This means that rarp requests *won't* make it through a Netware file server routing IP (or indeed through many other IP routers). Rarp servers are available for Novell servers and for PCs running LAN Workplace for DOS (and quite possibly for other platforms as well). An NLM-based rarp server is available as follows: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/misc/rarpserv.nlm For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/misc/rarpserv.nlm E.8 Further reading Douglas Comer's "Internetworking with TCP/IP: (in three volumes) is an excellent and complete guide to TCP/IP. F. ELECTRONIC MAIL F.1 Pegasus Mail Pegasus Mail is a free mail program written by David Harris. It has almost every feature you could wish for in a mail program, and is well supported. Pegasus supports MHS and runs on NetWare 3.x and 4.x. DOS, Windows and Mac versions are available at: http://www.pegasus.usa.com If you also need an Internet e-mail gateway get Charon or Mercury (same directory--see questions F.2 and F.3 for details) you will be able to setup a Novell/Internet gateway. F.2 Setting up an Internet gateway for Pegasus Mail -- Charon Charon is a bi-directional Novell print queue to Unix LPD gateway and Internet/Novell mail gateway program. The mail gateway section works in conjunction with Pegasus Mail. Charon is free. It requires a dedicated workstation to run on; if you use the mail gateway you require an SMTP mail server as a mailing agent. Charon is available on many ftp sites, including: ftp://info.umd.edu/Software/Novell/Email/charon40a.zip *128.8.10.29* Note: Charon is no longer under development. F.3 Another Internet gateway for Pegasus Mail -- Mercury Mercury is an Internet/Novell mail gateway program that is designed to work in conjunction with Pegasus Mail (in fact its also written by David Harris). A major difference from Charon is that Mercury is a set of 3 NLMs and so runs on a file server. Mercury requires that your file server handle TCP/IP and can only serve one file server (whereas Charon can route mail to up to 8 file servers). Like Charon, Mercury needs an SMTP mail server (such as a Unix system) to handle outgoing mail. Mercury runs on NetWare 4.x in bindery emulation mode and is available at: http://www.pegasus.usa.com F.3.1 Pegasus/Mercury plus NetWare 4.1 considerations With v4.1, Mercury/Pegasus no longer supports the print queue method of passing email back and forth. Instead, they use only the SPOOL directory method. However, many installations migrated from CHARON, which supports only print queues, to Mercury. Since most of us have a bias in favor of doing what worked in the past, a Mercury/Pegasus reconfiguration is a common NetWare v3.1x to v4.1 prerequisite. [Thx D.E.H.] After upgrading from 3.x to 4.1, and assuming you're running Bindery Emulation (for the benefit of Mercury), you'll have to run Pegasus' PCONFIG to set all the info again. Only the new PCONFIG that comes with the WinPmail 2.4x has stuff for working directly with NDS. If you're using the "older" PCONFIG (like many of us), then run "PCONFIG /B" to correctly set the Bindery Emulation stuff under 4.1. [Thanks to Theodore Hope for this info] F.4 Other electronic mail packages There are a variety of commercial e-mail packages on the market, including Microsoft Mail and CC:Mail. These can be connected to an Internet gateway (like Pegasus Mail). However, these packages use their own gateway systems, available from the suppliers of the e-mail packages. F.5 Eudora Eudora started as freeware, but now there are freeware and commercial versions. There are DOS, Windows and Mac versions, with the latest freeware version (1.5.2) available at: http://www.qualcomm.com/quest/QuestMain.html F.6 DNS and smart mailer Charon and Mercury are SMTP gateways and provide no DNS or Sendmail capabilties. To obtain a smart mailer (ie. sendmail/smail/mmdf) with DNS for the NetWare platform, try: http://www.unoverica.com/ [Thx E.H.#2] G. PRINTING G.1 Printing to/from Unix systems The Novell solution is to purchase the NetWare Flex/IP package which includes a bi-directional print gateway. According to Novell's press release, it "allows Unix users to access printers attached to NetWare systems and NetWare users to access printers that are attached to UNIX systems. The UNIX printer will appear to the user as a normal NetWare print queue, while the NetWare queues will appear as UNIX print queues to the UNIX user. In addition, the UNIX print filter mechanism is supported enabling print jobs to be preprocessed before submission to the printer device..." The Netware NFS package which provides Unix file services on a Netware v3.11 server also includes the Flex/IP printer functions. NetWare NFS was updated on August 10, 1995, with the update file available at: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/netwire/novlib/01/nfs197.exe For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/netwire/novlib/01/nfs197.exe A third-party solution is also available. iQueue is a pair of LPD and LPR NLMs for Netware 3.1x and 4.x. Filters supported are: Text (CR/LF), Text to Postscript and Fortran. A demo that runs for 1 hour then unloads is available by: ftp://ftp.novell.com/pub/netwire/novuser/05/lpdnlm.zip [Thanks to Quentin Smart for the info on iQueue] For a free solution, see section F.2 for information on Charon 4.x. G.2 Sharing PC and Macintosh printers You can share printers between PCs and Macintoshes using Netware. The exact mechanism depends on whether you use Netware v2.x or Netware v3.11. Macintoshes can only print over the network to Appletalk printers (which are network devices, similar in concept to a Netware print server). Sharing PC and Mac printers involves setting up a print queue to appear on the network as an Appletalk printer. If you use Netware v2.x you can set up an Appletalk printer to be used by Macintoshes. This printer must be on the Appletalk network and serves a queue on the file server. This queue appears on the network to be an Appletalk printer (such as a LaserWriter) and like an ordinary print queue PC clients can print to it. The important thing to note here is that the Appletalk printer must be attached to the network and is visible to Mac clients. Since Appletalk offers limited access controls the printer is available to any Mac client on your network. Netware v3.11 offers more options than Netware v.2x. With Netware for Macintosh v3 you can do the following: * Advertise any printer queue to appear as an Appletalk printer * Service a queue with a real Appletalk printer Effectively a printer queue can be advertised as an Appletalk printer, regardless of how the printer attaches to the queue. This means printer queues serviced by a normal Netware print server can also appear to a Macintosh client as an Appletalk printer. Also, a printer queue can be serviced by an Appletalk printer without the queue being visible to a Mac client. Other options with Netware for Macintosh v3 allow you to hide an Appletalk printer which is serving a queue. This means that Mac clients must use the queue instead of the real printer. You can also restrict Mac-based users of the queue to those connected to the file server. The combination of these two features allows you to carefully control access to printers. These options are controlled by switches in the printer specification in ATPS.CFG. A complete description of these switches can be found in the "Netware for Macintosh Installation and Maintenance Guide", pps 213-241. Some are summarised here: Option Does this -------- -------------------------- -o Renames a localtalk Q to a netware print Q -h Hides a localtalk printer which services the queue -a Makes a netware Q accessable only when logged in -y Disables the 'job completed' notification for Mac Users And some examples: e.g. 1 Print Q in same zone as server "localtalk name" -o "netware Q name" -h -a -y e.g. 2 Print Q in zone other than server "localtalk name:zone name2" -o "netware Q name:zone name2" G.3 Getting garbage in printouts If you occasionally get garbage in the middle of your print jobs, you're probably running PSERVER V1.21, which ships with NetWare 3.11. There is a known bug in this version which causes it to sometimes emit spurious characters when its buffer empties. A temporary solution would be to increase the size of the buffer in PCONSOLE; this should mask the problem for typical text jobs (but not for long ones, or for graphics) and is often not a bad idea as it will slightly improve the efficiency of PSERVER's operation. The permanent solution is to get a current copy of PSERVER. Look for the latest copy of PSERVER on Compuserve or your favourite ftp site. Another possibility is that you are running a serial printer and having problems with handshaking. In general, a print server can send data faster than a printer can print it (and in fact, this is the way you want it so that you are not artificially slowing down your printer). At some point, the printer has to be able to tell the print server to stop sending until it can deal with the data that's in its buffer. This can be done using hardware handshaking (there are several RS-232 pins for this purpose) or software handshaking (usually using the ASCII XON and XOFF characters). Both the printer and the print server must be configured to use the same method of handshaking. You will probably need to look in your printer's manual to find out what method(s) it supports, and how to enable them. For the print server, use the Printer Configuration screen in PCONSOLE. Another factor to bear in mind is whether or not your printer uses binary codes to position print on the page (such as a HP Laser Jet). You may need to set the queue to use BYTESTREAM rather than TEXT to allow control codes with value 13 to be transmitted. G.4 Alternatives to PCONSOLE & PSTAT for monitoring printer queues QView v1.5 is a program that will allow you to view several print queues at once. QView Pro v2.3 is a Pconsole replacement. With QView Pro, an operator may place jobs on hold, delete jobs, or move jobs between queues with a click-drag-drop of the mouse. You are welcome to try both if you would like. Note that these are demo versions of licensed software. Full details are available from the author (S.H./Secure Design) at http://www.peak.org/~sdesign or support@sdesign.com. Jeff Pilant (pilant@nadc.nadc.navy.mil) wrote QLST [on netlab2.usu.edu] to show all pending and active jobs on all queues. Source is included. He also wrote SELECT [also on netlab2.usu.edu] to select a print queue when you have many to choose from. It also provides for defaulting the queue based on workstation location and source is included. [Thx J.P.] If you use Windows and Netware 3.11, 3.12 but not 4.10, you can use QManager (freeware) at: ftp://ftp.arch.pwr.wroc.pl/home/ftp/novell/adminutl/qm.zip [Thanks to Bengt Bolinder for this info] QUEMON will monitor several queues at once and show the status in an easy to read fashion. It's free and it's at: ftp://ftp.mechnet.liv.ac.uk/novell/freeware/quemon18.zip or http://www.mechnet.liv.ac.uk/~roy/freeware.html [Thx R.C.] G.5 Relocating print queues Try the freeware utility CreateQ: ftp://ftp.novell.com/pub/netwire/novuser/06/creatq.zip [Thanks to Paul Tichy for this info] The following steps will allow you to move print queues to another NetWare volume: - Use JRBUtil's CreatObj with the following statement : creatobj /o=3 /d=data:queue temp Note: JRBUtils are available at netlab2 and mirrors and at: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/apps/jrb400a.zip For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/apps/jrb400a.zip - Goto pconsole and select print server, print server configuration, queues serviced by printer, press insert, choose temp. - Goto pconsole and select print queues. - Rename an existing queue (press F3) to something else - Rename temp to the existing queue name - This way, users will transparently be printing to the same print queue but it will be using a different location. [Thanks to Rajnish Mishra for this info] NetWare 4.x now allows the administrator to create print queues on volumes other than SYS: [Thx S.M.D.] G.6 Do postscript printer viruses exist? >Anyone heard of printer viruses? We've been told that some viruses can >be spread to a printer by downloading a Postscript font. Various >printer manufacturer's say no way. Only problem I know of for PS printers is if some PS code resets the password to "lock you out", requiring you to take the printer apart and remove the battery backed CMOS chip or battery (if memory serves). I think that qualifies as a virus...except that it doesn't propagate... until the person printing tries another printer when the first chokes. The following code is supposed to protect against this -- it also provides an alert if someone tries to change the password as well. Just replace "NAME" and "xxx-xxxx" as appropriate, then using DOS just copy this code to the printer. serverdict begin 0 exitserver statusdict /setpassword {userdict begin /evilpassword exch def pop (PASSWORD ALERT - CONTACT NAME at xxx-xxxx)=flush /Helvetica findfont 24 scalefont setfont 20 50 720 {70 exch moveto (PASSWORD ALERT - CONTACT NAME at xxx-xxxx) show} for showpage stop } put [Thx F.P.M.] G.7 Printing to the right queue without running Win / Print / Setup CAP2 is a Windows shareware that lets you print from lpt1-lpt9 on up to 100 netware queues using only the right printer driver for that printer. Only allow HP -> HP, Canon -> Canon, etc. Capture in user hold mode. If a queue is not found, try default server or other servers. ftp://ftp.coast.net/SimTel/win3/network/cap202.zip [Thanks to Bengt Bolinder for this info] G.8 Alternatives to PSERVER for more than 16 printers, etc. FPserver (Fast Printer Server) by Richard L. Hartman, rlh@ior.com, is $95 for a file server license. You can run up to 7 printers off each computer, 4 serial and 3 lpt, and as many computers as you want to setup as print servers. Printing is fast, and it uses the same queues as NetWare so no special configuration is required. We are using 8088 cpus, and it can service 3 printers as fast as they can go. It also doesn't use interrupts which is one less worry, and allows monitoring what is printing so you can delete or rush print jobs. ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/apps/fps34c.exe [Thanks to Michael D. Setzer II & Richard L. Hartman for this info] NetWare 4 relieves this situation by allowing PSERVER to handle 255 printers. [Thx S.M.D.] G.9 Print Server auditing programs AuditTrack v2.0 will audit everything on 3.x and 4.x servers. It is available for a free 30 day trial at http://www.egsoftware.com [Thx E.S.] G.10 Running NPrinter or RPrinter without being logged in It is possible to execute NPrinter without first logging into the network. Possible with RPrinter too. I use a local directory for the xPrinter files. You will need the following files: NPRINTER EXE 350,606 11-15-93 3:39p TEXTUTIL HEP 11,735 10-26-92 4:06p NPRINTER HEP 8,205 01-22-93 5:23p NPRINTER HLP 7,618 06-17-93 11:49a NPRINTER MSG 9,259 05-18-93 9:49a TEXTUTIL MSG 29,466 01-27-93 6:56p 437_UNI 001 659 01-26-93 4:57p 850_UNI 001 659 01-26-93 4:57p UNI_1252 001 2,196 01-26-93 5:10p UNI_437 001 2,836 01-26-93 4:57p UNI_850 001 2,708 01-26-93 4:58p UNI_COL 001 4,500 01-23-93 2:24p UNI_MON 001 4,244 01-23-93 2:23p 1252_UNI 001 659 01-26-93 5:10p IBM_RUN OVL 2,815 01-19-93 10:33a TEXTUTIL IDX 9,170 12-10-90 1:37p Note: The above files are from a NW 4.01 system upgraded to NW 4.1, your file dates and sizes may differ. [Thanks to John Withers for this info] Further to the above, the way to find exactly which files are required is to execute NPrinter /v which should show the current versions of all files required by NPrinter. You can either put these files into the LOGIN directory, which all users (by default, anyway) have R F Access to or you can copy them to a local drive. Then all that's needed is to execute: LSL DRIVER.COM IPXODI [loading IPXODI /A will save some KB of RAM] VLM N{PRINTER ??? etc. [Thx M.M.#2] G.11 Page counting software PCOUNTER v3.31 is a page counting print server for Novell NetWare. It counts pages on PCL and PostScript printers, logs all printer activity & maintains user accounting, supports custom banners & remote control, as well as parallel, serial and networked printers. It also has a NetWare print queue to UNIX LPR gateway, will automatically convert text to PostScript if necessary and can reject incorrect print job types or incorrect paper sizes if desired. It is available as an EXE (for dedicated print servers) or NLM (running on the NetWare server) at: http://www.webcom.com/andtech/welcome.html [Thanks to Andy Charmatz & Vlasti Broucek for this info] G.12 Transfering print jobs between NetWare and Unix print queues SDLP is an NLM that provides the ability to transfer print jobs between NetWare print queues and UNIX print queues. SDLP acts as a print server/ client that implements the LPR/LPD protocol as described in RFC 1179 and provides compatibility with most LPR/LPD software for UNIX systems, bidirectional transfer of print jobs between NetWare and UNIX, user notification after a print job has been transferred, configuration from the NetWare server console, service for multiple queues on a file server, automatic text translations with CR and LF characters and host access control for incoming print jobs. SDLP supports Netware 3.x and 4.x. For more information, email: support@sdesign.com or browse: http://www.peak.org/~sdesign [Thx S.H.] H. MISC H.1 Booting a server without running STARTUP.NCF/AUTOEXEC.NCF There may be times when you want to boot a file server without running the startup scripts C:\STARTUP.NCF and SYS:SYSTEM/AUTOEXEC.NCF. With NetWare 3.x, when you issue the SERVER command, include the parameter -ns To not execute the STARTUP.NCF -na To not execute the AUTOEXEC.NCF Note1: These parameters are case sensitive and MUST BE lowercase. Note2: NEVER load memory management software before running SERVER.EXE! Under NetWare 2.x all of the configuration information is incorporated into the NET$OS.EXE file so the question doesn't really apply; you would have to regenerate the operating system with NETGEN to change it. [Thanks to Jay Sissom for clarifying the 2.x issues] To start server with another STARTUP.NCF type: SERVER -S START2.NCF To start server with another AUTOEXEC.NCF type: SERVER -A AUTO2.NCF To start server without Directory Services open use -NDB and to start server in internal debugger use SERVER -D (this is the only documented option: type HELP RESTART SERVER on System Console). Options seems to work with RESTART SERVER command. [Thanks to Petr Jaklin for this info] H.2 How to login without running the system/user login script The DEFAULT login script built into LOGIN.EXE executes after the SYSTEM login script (NET$LOG.DAT) when there are no USER login scripts. The solution is to either use an EXIT command at the end of the SYSTEM login script or create individual USER login scripts. The latter approach is more work but there is security benefit to creating USER login scripts. Among other things the DEFAULT login script maps S1 and S2 search drives to SYS:PUBLIC and to the DOS subdirectories under PUBLIC. It also attempts to map a user home directory immediately under SYS: For more information see the Installaton and Upgrade red book. By the way you cannot modify the DEFAULT login script because it is built into LOGIN.EXE so the best you can do is prevent it from executing. [Thanks to Andrew Lampert for this info] In NetWare 3.12 and above, or earlier versions upgraded to the latest LOGIN.EXE, you can use the NO_DEFAULT login script command to prevent the execution of the default user login script for users who have no personal login script. [Thx S.M.D.] Alternatively, you could ensure that every user has a NetWare login script, however small, and that there is a system level NetWare login script as well. By the way, use "PATH string" as opposed to "SET PATH=string". The former goes through command.com for regularization, the latter is taken verbatim. [Thx Joe D.] This last point is a good idea from a security standpoint, too. Basically, on a server where users are allowed to have their own personal login scripts, an account without one may be a security hole. For the details, see the Hacking NetWare FAQ at: http://www.nmrc.org/faqs/netware/index.html A number of Netware hacking files and additional info are at: http://www.nmrc.org/files and http://www.nmrc.org/pandora [Thx S.M.D., G.B.#2 and Simple Nomad] Or, you could ATTACH instead of LOGIN to the NetWare file server(s). You will either need to first login to another file server which has the ATTACH command available or copy ATTACH.EXE to the workstation's disk. Then enter the login command as "LOGIN /S nul *username*" which will attempt to read the script from the DOS nul device, which always returns end of file, effectively avoiding reading a login script. If you are running NetWare 4.x you can LOGIN /NS (/NS meaning No Script). In a 3.x environment use LOGIN /S... Use /S to point to a text file on a local drive containing login script statements (A simple WRITE "It worked" should do) The easiest way of all is to LOGIN to another server and ATTACH to the problem server. If security is not an issue, copy ATTACH.EXE to your sys:login directory to avoid future problems. [Thanks to A. Murray for this info] At least in 3.1x, the Login scripts are in the mail directory. So the supervisor Login script is at sys:mail\1\login. If all login scripts are going to be the same, set the system Login scripts to what you like it to be and have only exit in the user login script. You don't want to leave no login because people have write access to the mail directory and can store a login script that causes problems. If there is something there, they can't change it. [Thanks to Tom Tuckerman for this info] H.3 Remotely controlling a PC with a telnet compatible program To use Telnet to remotely control a PC, get telnetd.zip at: http://www.futureone.com/~opeth/internetwork.html [Thx S.R.#2] It works really well with CUTCP TELNET, and also works fine with MacTCP TELNET and most other TELNETs as well. H.4 Getting userIDs and other information into programs There are essentially four ways to import Novell information into programs you have written, each of which is appropriate for some solutions: H.4.1 Environment variables Use the login script command: dos set VARIABLE="Value" to put the user-id (%LOGIN_NAME), station number, etc. (consult the Novell documentation for the list of available values), into an environment variable. Now you will be able to retrieve the environment variable in both batch files and programs. In Turbo Pascal as well as most varieties of C and C++ use the expression GetEnv("VARIABLE") to retrieve an environment variable. This technique is good for simple programs which only need a few Novell values, and for batch files. H.4.2 Piping in information from WHOAMI Write your program to read its input in the form that WHOAMI types, and then pipe in the output from WHOAMI: WHOAMI [/a] | YOURPROGRAM You will have to program to ignore lines that contain only / - \ because these still appear at the head of the file while the program is scanning the bindery information. This is inefficient, but it is the only way to get arbitrary group memberships if you cannot use either H.4.3 or H.4.4 below. H.4.3 Novell APIs Purchase the Novell APIs, available in both C (which work with several versions of C and C++, including all Borland products) and assembly language (which you could also use in any high level language with an interrupt command). With these you can retrieve directly almost any information that the account running the program has access to. The APIs provide not only basic services like user-names and connection number, but advanced ones like print queues and IPX/SPX communications, among others. You can order the Novell SDK by calling 800-RED-WORD or 801-429-5281. The Novell SDK is made available by subscription. The base price is $345 per year. This includes four releases of the SDK CD, a choice of a Novell product for your development/test environment, and a support incident. For further details please see http://developer.novell.com Documentation may be viewed at http://doc1.provo.novell.com/ [Thx J.P.] This is the best and most efficient solution, but requires investment in the APIs as well as programming knowledge. An alternative to the SDKs is "Programmer's Guide to Netware" by Charles Rose. This book has extensive details on Netware v2.x system calls and covers many Netware v3.x calls. There is also a shareware API library available via anonymous FTP at: ftp://ftp.coast.net/SimTel/msdos/c/netclb35.zip or any SimTel mirror site. [Thx A.C.] A Pascal NetWare API supporting programming language is NWTP06. It stands out because it is very complete (it does not however support Netware 4 as yet) and is available at: ftp://novftp.rc.rug.nl:/proglibs/nwtp06.zip It contains over 400KB of sources in more than 250 interface functions, over 500KB documentation and more than 200KB samples. The author is Rene Spronk. [Thanks to Olger Diekstra for this info] H.4.4 Third Party Utilities UPDATE.EXE by Robert Evans is a freeware utility that allows you to detect the existence of specific sub-strings in text files, add, replace, delete specific lines, files, directories etc. ftp://ftp.soe.purdue.edu/pub/update/ [Thx D.L.] USERDUMP by Roy Coates will tap the bindery and list user info such as mail address, user id, etc. and is available at: ftp://ftp.mechnet.liv.ac.uk/novell/freeware/userdump.zip or http://www.mechnet.liv.ac.uk/~roy/freeware.html [Thx R.C.] DISKHOG by Roy Coates will list the disk space used by user, including subdirectories and is available at: ftp://ftp.mechnet.liv.ac.uk/novell/freeware/diskhog.zip or http://www.mechnet.liv.ac.uk/~roy/freeware.html [Thx R.C.] H.5 What do all those columns in STAT.NLM v2.0 mean? STAT.NLM is a process which records performance information for a Netware v3.11 file server. STAT records a data point once per second and writes to the disk once per minute to minimize the effect on the server. Use DUMPSTAT to output the STAT data in a readable format. This is a DOS command and its syntax is: DUMPSTAT inputpath [outputpath] [-L | -X | -S | -Nnum | -Mnum] where -L Lotus format (comma delimited) -X Excel format (tab delimited) -S Screen format (column justified) -N Output file size (default is 7200 points or 2 hours). You can increase this if you want to put a day's worth in one file, etc. A file with 8 hours of data would therefore have -N28800. -M Data reduction factor ... or do you really not want that much data. This is the number of records that will be averaged and output to a single record. So putting 60 in here would give you a point per minute instead of a point per second. 300 would give you a point per 5 minutes. Here is the official word from Novell on what the columns of output mean: 1. CPU utilization 2. Bytes received (bytes read from LAN comm channel) 3. Bytes transmitted (bytes written to the LAN comm channel) 4. Bytes read (bytes read from the disk) 5. Bytes written (bytes written through cache to the disk channel) 6. Packets routed (# packets using the router services of the server) 7. Number of connections An important warning for anyone using STAT.NLM: the next filename to be used by STAT.NLM is stored in a file called STAT.CFG. You must use the STAT configuration utility to change this -- using a text editor will most likely crash your file server. [Thx G.F.] H.6 Changing the number of licenced users on a Netware server This answer refers to Netware v3.1x only. The serial number and maximum connection count are both found in SERVER.EXE. When you get your upgrade package from Novell, copy this file from the SYSTEM-1 diskette over your old SERVER.EXE on your server's boot diskette or boot partition and your server is upgraded. Note that it might be wise to keep the old SERVER.EXE around in case you later discover that the new SYSTEM-1 diskette has a media error or something. Also, if you have applied any static patches to your old SERVER.EXE, they will have to be re-applied to the new one (semi-static and dynamic patches, loaded in your AUTOEXEC.NCF, do not modify SERVER.EXE and will continue to work as usual). [Thx S.M.D.] H.7 Register memory ("Cache memory alloc. out of avail. memory" msg) This section was based on NOVELL FYI 1.1.39, extended to include information provided by George Whitehead, R.J.L., Joe D. and S.M.D. It has been modified by a new TID500055 (15AUG94) that counters some of the original information. ISSUE/PROBLEM Server error message: Cache memory allocator out of available memory. This can occur when mounting disk volumes even when there are plenty of cache buffers available in machines with more than 16M of memory. It can also occur I guess when you have run out of memory completely but the solution in this case is obvious. SOLUTION EISA machines should be configured to use AUTO REGISTER MEMORY, but in the case of ISA machines or EISA machines that are not configured correctly, the following kludge will solve the problem. Every machine that requires the REGISTER MEMORY command, uses more than 16MB of RAM, and has large disk storage, will exhibit problems such as this. This is not an issue in machines that do not require the REGISTER MEMORY command (such as the COMPAQ SystemPro, PS/2 MODELs 90, 95, HP Vectra etc.) because at boot up you see all of the RAM. By the time you register memory in the AUTOEXEC.NCF, volume SYS: has already been mounted. At the time the first volume is mounted, NetWare draws a line in the sand, and only memory which it had available at that time can be used for FAT caching for all subsequent volumes, regardless of how much physical memory is available at that time. Therefore, subsequent volumes will be mounted downward in memory until you eventually run out of memory below 16 meg (see figure 1 below). Figure 1: |======{==}={==}={==}| ==========================| {== VL2 VL1 SYS 16 64 MEG of MEMORY MEG The key is to REGISTER MEMORY before loading the disk drivers or mounting volume SYS:, as illustrated in figure 2 below. Figure 2: |===============|=================={==}{==}{==}| 16 { = VL2 VL1 SYS 64 MEG of MEMORY MEG Here is the procedure: Step 1. Remove ALL DISK DRIVERS out of the startup.ncf file. If this is all that startup.ncf has then delete it. For example my startup.ncf is: set minimum packet receive buffers = 200 Step 2. Create an Autoexec.ncf file in the same DOS directory as SERVER.EXE, making sure that the register memory command is executed before volume SYS is mounted. Use the format listed below. file server name HOPE ipx internal net 9088 register memory 1000000 1000000 load isadisk port=1F0 int=E mount SYS autoboot Step 3. Create an Autoboot.ncf file in the SYSTEM directory. Put into it all other Autoexec.ncf commands. load NE2000 port=300 int=3 frame=ETHERNET_802.3 bind IPX to NE2000 net=01abfeed etc. The decision to use the name autoboot is purely personal. The mechanism will work with a single Autoexec.ncf on the DOS drive containing all of the autoexec.ncf commands. The advantage of the 2 file method is that the complex part of the autoexec.ncf file is on the Netware partition and can be edited from a workstation using your favourite editor while the server is up. Others may find it preferable to have a single autoexec.ncf on the DOS partition of the server as this allows access to it when the server is down. [Thanks to George Whitehead, R.J.L., Joe D. & S.M.D.] Related bits and pieces. Joe D. posted a message to the NOVELL LISTSERVER at the start of July (1994) which described how to configure EISA memory cards. Earlier versions of the driver for the ISA/MCA Adaptec host adapters (154x and 164x series) had a command-line parameter which informed them that they were operating in a machine with more than 16 MB of memory. Current versions of the drivers for these cards do not require this parameter and the EISA cards have never required this parameter. Some drivers may require: set reserved buffers below 16 MB = 64 [See H.16 below for more info on Adaptec] It is possible to 'RUN' a sequence of netware console commands from a batch file by typing the name of the file from the console. Put the commands in a file in the SYSTEM directory and give it an NCF extension. For example if the file was called TEST.NCF it could be run by typing TEST, then pressing ENTER, at the console prompt. [Thanks to Douglas Scott and S.M.D. for the info] Some EISA don't register memory above 16MB. If this is the case, the NSEPRO describes the solution for servers running NW4 is to put the following lines in STARTUP.NCF: SET AUTO REGISTER ABOVE 16 MEGABYTES = OFF SET RESERVED BUFFERS BELOW 16 MEG = 200 ...load the disk drivers LOAD MEMFRGFX [Thanks to ksommers for the info] Also, make sure there is no interrupt conflict. Drew Morris reported problems when a PCI SCSI card was set to Interrupt 15 and another problem when a PCI adapter was on Interrupt 9. [Thanks to Drew Phillips for the info] Additional note: Netware 4.x auto-registers memory in a PCI-bus server but Netware 3.x doesn't...unless you have more than 64 MB of RAM. Above 64 MB you will have to register manually, which can be done in the NetWare 4.x STARTUP.NCF file. [Thx A.S.] TID500055 Mounting Volumes and Memory Allocation Some Early Information About Mounting Volumes May Be Misleading Documented issues about registering memory on ISA and some EISA machines have been interpreted to say that NetWare mounts volumes from the top of the memory block down. That model seemed to explain the memory limits for mounting volumes and the necessity to avoid mounting the SYS volume before registering all memory. While it is true that all memory should be registered with NetWare before any volumes mount, it is not true that volumes mount from the top of the block down. How NetWare Uses Memory to Mount Volumes and Grow the Directory Hash Table Mounting a volume consists largely of reading the FAT from disk into server memory. After the FAT is loaded then the DET, directory entry table, is scanned and a hash table is built in server memory. Two simple rules govern the allocation of memory for mounting volumes. The first rule: when the first volume mounts, NetWare defines a block and all subsequent volumes will mount in that block. The second rule: the memory allocated for the volumes grows from the bottom of the block upward. The DHT, directory hash table, will be in the same block and, like volumes, will grow from low to high. Assuming the block in question to be the only block then any NLMs loaded or other cache buffers required will be allocated from the top of the block down. In summary, volumes and DHTs grow from the bottom of the block up and NLMs and other cache buffer requests use memory from the top down. [Thanks to Mark Cramer for this info] H.8 Where to get the Windows NT requester A new version of the Windows NT client requester is now available at: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/updates/nwos/ntclnt For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/updates/nwos/ntclnt [Thx H.K.] H.9 Why can't I format a floppy under Windows when using boot ROM? When remote booting, the NIC takes the place of the machine's A drive as the startup device (Note: the boot image is nothing more than an image of a bootable floppy disk). DOS notes this by marking drive A as the startup device. To avoid wiping out your DOS and Windows system, Windows won't let you format your boot disk/system disk. Jeff Macdonald has created a shareware program for use with Windows that "fools" Windows into thinking that the C drive is the startup drive, thus allowing Windows to format the A: drive. The file is called FAKESTUP.COM and can be found at many of the Novell sites including Joe D's site: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/apps/fakestup.zip For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/apps/fakestup.zip [Thanks to Doug Williams for this info] H.10 Getting a list of usernames on a server to an ASCII file John Baird of New Zealand has developed a range of tools for Netware which are widely regarded as essential for supervisors. One of these is GRPLIST, which will list all users in a group. To get all usernames into an ASCII file, issue the following command: GRPLIST * /f which will create a file called USERS.LIS containing all user names on the server. John's utilities are available from most of the ftp servers listed in the FAQ (section C.2), as well as at: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/apps/jrb400a.zip For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/apps/jrb400a.zip H.10.1 Creating users from an ASCII file There are at least two programs that will create users based on input from an ASCII file. H.10.1.1 Mass User Management Mass User Management reads in a tab, comma or space delimited file and creates the users. It uses templates to match different user account restrictions to different users in the ASCII file. A demo is available at: ftp://ftp.coast.net/SimTel/msdos/novell/MUM13B.ZIP This version of Mass User only works in bindery emulation on NetWare 4.1 servers so all users must be in the same context. An NDS version is in the works, though. Co-authored by Shawn_Holmstead@novell.com and others. Now works with VLMs. H.10.1.2 UImport -- reads an ASCII text file and adds users UImport reads an ASCII text file and adds users. I know nothing further. H.10.1.3 ScanUser -- scans/creates unknown/missing Mail directories ScanUser is a small utility that scans for unknown or missing Mail directories, with the option to create missing ones. It is for sites with many users, and avoid the bother of logging in each user with /b to create the Mail directories. It also searches for Unknown Mail and Home Directories. ScanUser is free but you are asked to register if you are using it at: http://www.petena.se/support/register.htm You can get ScanUser at: http://www.petena.se/software/ [Thanks to P.S.#2 and Johan Wahlen for this info] H.11 Remote access to a LAN There are a variety of ways to get access to your network remotely. These include running a telnet server (e.g. telnetd described elsewhere) on a workstation and accessing it via tcp/ip, running remote control clients and accessing them via modem, running remote network node clients and accessing them via modem and of course iptunneling across a tcpip network. Conceptually and practically, the simplest solution for many people is to run a remote control client on their own workstation which they dial into and control from remote sites. This requires 2 modems (preferably fast ones using V.34, or V.32bis in a pinch) and also requires that you leave your workstation permanently turned on - in itself arguably a Good Thing provided that the monitor is off. It also requires some software and there are a large number of choices. Commercial packages include PC-Anywhere, CloseUp, Blast, Carbon Copy and Reachout (Stac Electronics, 1201 19th Place, Vero Beach, Fla 32960 (407)770-4777, FAX: (407)770-4779, TECH: (407)563-2255, www.stac.com). These cost around $100 to $200 per node and often work quite reasonably. Shareware packages such as Telereplica (check your SimTel mirror) ftp://ftp.radio-msu.net/.1/.m/Coast/msdos/modem/tr4-26.zip offer a very cost effective solution. Telereplica has long passwords which are very hard to crack and can even do dialback for added security. The only drawback is that it does not do graphics but at 9600 baud, life's too short anyway! If you really need to run a graphics package (e.g. Harvard Graphics or whatever), do it at home and upload the results to your workstation. It's much faster that way ! There's also PCRemote from PC Magazine. ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/.5/asme/COMM/PCREMOTE.ZIP PCRemote has assembler source for a simple remote control package via modem which could be the basis for a more sophisticated effort. [Thanks to Dr Ross Lazarus & S.R.#2 for this info] One of the Very Frequent Questions on this list is how can folks dial into their NetWare file server. At present, they can't, at least not like they think they might. Some device has to act as a client node on the network and then put things into a form suitable for async transmission. Whether SLIP or PPP or another framing method is used normally is a small part of the picture. In any case, the server is not an interactive login machine such as a Unix box and DOS does not work to a classical terminal interface. This means the node on the net can execute the DOS programs and relay screen and keyboard updates across the phone lines (Carbon Copy, PC Anywhere, et al), or it can try to wrap IPX packets into async frames and unpack them on the other end. Things such as Netblazer/Worldblazer modems (though by now "modem" is the small part) act as such relay nodes. Novell's Access Server, and similar boxes, run a bunch of DOS machines having keyboard/screen relayed across the net. NAS simulates many machines on one via a special version of DESQview. Since you have LWP/DOS 4.1, have a look at the XPC part of things. The idea is to relay the keyboard/screen of a DOS machine executing the program of choice across a wire using IP packets and the X window system protocol on top. Thus you could execute WordPerfect/DOS sessions from your Sun workstation, with your DOS PC doing the real work. Taking one more step, put a modem on your office DOS PC, run XPC there, and at home fire up a PC running X to a matching modem. You might want to look at: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/..???../brainshr.zip which is basically the floppy disk passed out at Brainshare/SLC (aka Novell Developer's Conference) this spring by Brian Meek addressing LWP/DOS, dialing, SLIP_PPP, and even Kermit's role in this. The development Kermit was just for developers, is out of date and should not be redistributed. [Thx Joe D.] H.12 Short Term Memory -- how much does your server need? The default Short Term Memory allocation will ALWAYS crash your server if any type of load is put on it. I would suggest that you immediately set this value up to 5000000. We happen to run our servers at 8000000. The exact syntax, which can be placed in your AUTOEXEC.NCF would be, SET MAXIMUM ALLOC SHORT TERM MEMORY=8000000 [Thx G.F.] Long term readers will recall my personal recommendation is to use the maximum amount of memory in the machine, or NW's limits, whichever is smallest, in this line. I don't have much factual information to go on, but my crystal ball says it makes a pool available contiguously and helps NLMs when their memory needs arise. It does not hinder other memory allocations nor consume cache buffers etc. {Thx Joe D.] H.13 BTRIEVE -- what do I need? Btrieve is a record manager running as an NLM on a Novell server. Certain applications can use a Btrieve client to make requests to the engine on the server. BTRIEVE.NLM is the server component, while BREQUEST.EXE is the DOS client. More complete documentation is included with the Novell manual set. When performing installs of some programs, make sure the btrieve related programs in sys:system are NOT flagged as read-only. Btrieve is no longer part of Novell. Btrieve Technologies can be reached at: #300 - 8834 N Capital of Texas Hwy, Austin, TX 78759-9774, Tel: 800- BTRIEVE (US & Can), 512-794-1719, Info@BtrvTech.COM, www.btrieve.com. [Thanks to Mark Fogel, H.K. & R.J.L. for this info] H.14 What to do if you've lost your SUPERVISOR password. Panic. :-) In fact there are several options you can try. SETSPASS.NLM, available via anonymous ftp from netlab2.usu.edu in misc or: ftp://ftp.zennet.com/pub/netware/ [Thx S.R.#2] allows you to change the SUPERVISOR password from the server console, as long as you know the serial number of your copy of Netware. SETPWD.NLM, that doesn't require that you have the serial number, is located in the same directory. LASTHOPE.NLM will "zap a corrupt bindery" but seems to suffer from poor (i.e. missing) docs. ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/apps/lasthope.zip If you have some unallocated disk space on the server you could create a new SYS: volume on that. This will create a new bindery as well as LOGIN, SYSTEM, PUBLIC and MAIL directories. However it is a bit drastic. Alternatively, *FOR NETWARE 2.X SERVERS ONLY*, you can try the following: 1. Bring the server down. 2. With some disk sector editing software (Norton Disk Edit for example) find the directory tables. 3. Change the name of files NET$VAL.SYS, NET$PROP.SYS, NET$OBJ.SYS to something else (preferably NET$VAL.OLD etc.) After that all user definitions will be deleted. 4. Bring the file server back up. 5. Login as supervisor (at that time you will need no password) 6. Find changed files in SYSTEM directory (they have attributes hidden, system), change their attributes to normal and be sure that they have extension ".OLD" 7. Run BINDREST program to get your original user definitions back. Now, you will have all your users including supervisor with their old definitions and passwords, but you are already in as supervisor and so you can change your password to anything you like. Note: It appears that in NetWare 2.x there are only two bindery files. For more information on this see the Hacking Netware FAQ at: http://www.nmrc.org/faqs/netware/index.html A number of Netware hacking files and additional info are at: http://www.nmrc.org/files and http://www.nmrc.org/pandora [Thx S.M.D. and Simple Nomad] You can also try to use your sector editor to edit the names used for the bindery files in SERVER.EXE. Unlike the previous NETWARE 2.X ONLY method, this has the advantage of not damaging the directory tables if things go wrong. Try the following steps: 1. Bring the server down. 2. Make a backup copy of SERVER.EXE. 3. With some disk sector editing software (Norton Disk Edit for example) change the name of files NET$VAL.SYS, NET$PROP.SYS, NET$OBJ.SYS where they occur in SERVER.EXE to something else (preferably TMP$VAL.SYS etc.) 4. Bring the file server back up. 5. Login as supervisor (at that time you will need no password) 6. Find changed files in SYSTEM directory (they have attributes hidden, system), change their attributes to normal and be sure that they have extension ".OLD" 7. Bring the server down again. 8. Restore your backed-up SERVER.EXE and reboot. 9. Run BINDREST program to get your original user definitions back. Now, you will have all your users including supervisor with their old definitions and passwords, but you are already in as supervisor and so you can change your password to anything you like. There is a program called BURGLAR that is designed to break passwords at: ftp://ftp.rhij.nl/cyco/burglar.nlm Note: BURGLAR creates a tempory user that is incomplete. Log in under this users name (and remove the account after use). BURGLAR was written by Bart Mellink from Cyco. http://www.cyco.nl There is additional information in the Hacking Netware FAQ at: http://www.nmrc.org/faqs/netware/index.html A number of Netware hacking files and additional info are at: http://www.nmrc.org/files and http://www.nmrc.org/pandora [Thx S.M.D. and Simple Nomad] H.15 Synchronising workstation time with server time Time synchronization occurs at two times. The first is at the time when the shell or redirector makes a connection to a server (the NOT-LOGGED-IN connection which gives you access to SYS:LOGIN). To disable this connection from setting your workstation's time, use SET STATION TIME = OFF in your NET.CFG. The second time is during the login process. In the absence of a SET_TIME OFF command in any login script executed by the user, the workstation's time will be set to that of the fileserver. This command is supported in the LOGIN.EXE which ships with NetWare 3.12 and 4.x; it can be downloaded from the usual places for earlier versions. [Thx S.M.D.] The synchronization of workstation and server clock is explained in the Novell Application Note "Time in the NetWare Environment", Jan 94 [Thx M.W.] H.16 Problems with disks and tape drives on Adaptec SCSI controllers Many users have experienced problems with older Adaptec SCSI controllers with both disks and tape drives. If you're running older Adaptec software you should upgrade it immediately to the current release (minimum 2 June 1994). You should also seriously consider upgrading your hardware, as the 1542C has problems in servers with more than 16MB memory. The 1542CF doesn't. [Thanks to Julian Byrne for this info] Contact Adaptec's Literature Hotline at 800-934-2766, BBS: 408-945-7727 Tech. Support Hotline: 800-959-SCSI (7274) or 408-945-2550, Interactive FAX: 408-957-7150 (PCI compatibility list is doc #21105), ftp://ftp.adaptec.com, http://www.adaptec.com [Thx V.K.R.] H.17 FTP address/contact info for various NIC MLID drivers Network Interface Card ODI MLID Vendors / Driver locations: 3Com Corporation (800) NET-3COM BBS: (408) 980-8204 ftp://ftp.3com.com/adapters *129.213.128.5* Accton Technology Corp. 800-926-9288 BBS: (408) 452-8828 ftp://ftp.edu.tw *140.111.1.10* ftp://ftp.accton.com.tw *192.72.24.119* http://www.accton.com.tw/ gopher://gopher.accton.com.tw/ support@accton.com.tw Allied Telesis, Inc. (206) 488-5888 BBS (206) 483-7979 ftp://ftp.salford.ac.uk/supplier/allied *146.87.255.21* ftp://gateway.centre.com/pub *198.93.88.66* Apple Computer Inc. (800) 538-9696 BOCA Research Inc. (407) 997-6227 Bus Logic techsup@buslogic.com Cabletron ftp://ctron.com/pub *134.141.197.25* Compaq ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/softpaq/Drivers *131.168.249.252* http://www.compaq.com/cgi-bin/present/support/latest.html CNet Technology Inc. (800) 486-2638 BBS: (408) 954-1787 Cogent Data Technologies Inc. (800) 4-COGENT BBS: (206)-378-5405 Digital Equipment Corp. (800) 722-9332 ftp://ftp.dec.com/pub/micro/msdos/network *16.1.0.2* D-Link Systems Inc. (800) 326-1688 ftp://dlink.com/pub *192.152.81.1* Eagle Technologies See Microdyne Hewlett-Packard Co. (800) 752-0900 ftp://ftp-boi.external.hp.com/pub/computer_products/network *192.6.71.2* ftp://ftp-boi.external.hp.com/html/novell.htm International Business Machines ftp://software.watson.ibm.com *129.34.139.5* Intel Corp. (800)538-3373 BBS: (503) 645-6275 ftp://ftp.intel.com/pub/support/etherexpress *143.185.65.2* http://www.intel.com Linq Systems Corp. (800) 870-3185 Microdyne 1140 Ringwood Court San Jose, CA 95131-1726 (408) 432-1191 Fax: (408) 432-1265 Mitron Computer Inc. (800) 713-6888 BBS: (408) 371-9786 ftp://mitron.com *199.182.76.100* Racal Interlan Inc. (800) LAN-TALK (508) 263-9926 fax: (508) 635-9140 email:Cust_Servie@RImail.interlan.com ftp://ftpserv.interlan.com/ *130.204.8.16* Standard Microsystems Corp. (800) SMC-4-YOU ftp://ftp.rug.nl/networks/novell/smc *129.125.4.15* ftp://novftp.rc.rug.nl/drivers/smc *129.125.3.31* ftp://ftp.smc.com Thomas-Conrad Corp (800) 424-3579 ftp://novftp.rc.rug.nl/drivers/thom-con *129.125.3.31* Tulip ftp://novftp.rc.rug.nl/drivers/tulip *129.125.3.31* Western Digital See Standard Microsystems Corp. http://www.wdc.com ftp://novftp.rc.rug.nl/drivers/western *129.125.3.31* Xircom, Inc 2300 Corporate Center Drive Thousands Oaks, CA 91320 Tel: 805-376-9300 Fax: 805-376-9030 BBS: 805-376-9130 Sales/Support: 800-438-4526, 800-874-7875 (Canada?) Tech Support: 805-376-9200 Tech Support Fax: 805-376-9130 Factsline Document Retrieval: 800-775-0400 Compuserve GO XIRCOM Canada - Keating Technologies, Inc. (416) 479-0230 (Markham, Ontario) Europe, Middle East, and Africa 32 3 326-34-94 (Belgium) BBS: 32 3 326-23-68 Asia Pacific (852) 525-2078 (Hong Kong) BBS: (852) 537-6048 There are also NIC ODI MLID drivers on these locations: Microsoft Corp. ftp://ftp.microsoft.com *198.105.232.1* http://www.microsoft.com Novell Inc. ftp://ftp.novell.com *137.65.1.2* http://www.novell.com ftp://sjf-lwp.sjf.novell.com *130.57.11.140* Utah State University ftp://netlab2.usu.edu *129.123.1.44* [Thx F.H.S.] H.17.1 Suitable NICs for the NetWare server itself >Are the 3Com "3C509" cards I have in my server suitable? 3C509 have a very small packet buffer, too small to stand much traffic at all. They interrupt the cpu with "packet has arrived" before the full packet is in, and that means the software does not know the size of the buffer to allocate to absorb the packet and thus it must allocate a max length one every time (memory hog, oink). The cpu must hang around waiting for the packet to arrive (1.5msec for a full length Ethernet packet, forever in cpu terms) and then clear the board. The cpu has to do all the work because the board is not a bus master kind. Given the tiny board buffering the cpu must attend to the board swiftly or packets get lost from overruns. All of these things are bad characteristics in a busy server, and modern NICs avoid these problems. An NE-2000 is a better board in a server, and there are many boards much better than the (ISA bus) 3C509 NIC. Good boards in servers are bus masters, meaning EISA or PCI bus currently. Not just PCI or EISA boards, but bus master boards. With these the main server can keep working on requests while the lan adapters deal with packet busywork, cpu utilization goes way way down, fewer packets are lost from overload, the server continues to perform well as the load grows high and higher. The disk system is happier too because there are fewer lapses of attention to it, so think of the server as being less stressed by better lan adapters (and by better disk adapters). Servers (CPUs, disks, NICs & RAM) are about to be strained by: (1) Win95 and its applications which require larger file transfers, (2) User demand for 100Mb/s service to the desktop. [Thx. Joe D.] H.18 Fax products for NetWare Optus Facsys provides OCR for incoming fax routing. Cheyenne FaxServe [runs as an NLM on the server] from Cheyenne Software, 516-484-5110 or 800-CHEY-TEC, Fax: 516-484-3493, faxserve@cheyenne.com. The latest version, 3.x, supports NetWare 4.x, NDS, and includes an enhanced FAX client for Windows workstations. QNT QPServer [requires a dedicated PC] Castelle FaxPress [allows the use of multiple fax/modems, doesn't need a dedicated PC, but incoming faxes must be routed] GammaLink, by Dialogic, makes fax boards supporting from 1 to 12 lines on a single board, each with it's own fax coprocessor. RightFAX, also by Dialogic, has servers for OS/2 and NT (but no NLMs). The OS/2 server works well with NetWare & there are RightFAX clients for DOS, Win & OS/2. http://ftp.dialogic.com/ Another possibility for fax boards is Brooktrout. [Thanks to H.K., Bill Willcutt & Ivo Spigel for this info] WinPort allows Network Faxing, Remote Access and Modem Pooling. You can also map the network modem to a standard unused comm port in windows. LanSource's Tech number is (416) 535-3555, sales@lansource.com [Thanks to Greg Horne and L.C.H. for this info] Faxware from Tobit, Germany. Is NLM based, supports almost any fax-modem, ISDN adapters with G3 add-on board for inbound routing, has an optional PCL NLM, an optional fax-on-demand module, an API and is fully integrated with Netware, ie. it knows users and groups, uses NW queues and can poll directories [Thx A.S.] For more information, check out: http://www.traffic.is/ http://www.faximum.com/w3vlib/fax/ [Thanks to Lennart Regebro for this info] H.19.1 Backup software products for NetWare Novaback works with NW 3.x and 4.0x servers, but it doesn't back up NDS. It also backs up FAT based disk drives on the local machine. Novaback is made by Novastor Corporation, #109-30961 Agoura Road, Westlake Village, CA 91361, Voice: (818) 707-9900, Fax: (818) 707-9902 and is available in DOS, Windows or NLM versions. Cheyenne Software makes ArcServe for DOS and Windows clients. ArcServe can also back up workstations. Cheyenne can be reached at 516-484-5110, Fax: 516-484-3493, or 800-CHEY-TEC for Technical Support. Mailing address: 3 Expressway Plaza, Roslyn Heights, New York 11577, arcserve@cheyenne.com or arcserve-win@cheyenne.com (for ver. 5), arcserve-dos@cheyenne.com (for ver. 4) or support@cheyenne.com. Also ftp: ftp.cheyenne.com and www: www.cheyenne.com. Make sure that the hardware that you plan to use is FULLY supported and certified by Cheyenne's compatibility listing and that you have all the LATEST patches and updates for your NetWare and supplementary products. Current version is 5.01G and there is a patch file for this, aw0200.exe. As of May 4, 1995 there is now a Arcserve eMail list run by Kevin Cheek (kcheek@umich.edu) -- send a message to majordomo@mmg2.im.med.umich.edu with a Text/Body line of Subscribe Arcserve or Subscribe Arcserve-Digest to get the digest. NOTE: A lot of people are very unhappy with Arcserve... [Thanks to Robert Maubouche, David Jancan & Kevin Cheek for this] BackupExec is a server based product by Arcada. It is fully SMS compliant and can back up 3.x and 4.1 based server including NDS. It also has the ability to backup other servers as well as DOS, Windows, Mac and Unix client stations. Arcada can be reached at http://www.arcada.com, or at #1101-37 Skyline Drive, Lake Mary, FL 32746, (800) 3ARCADA/(407) 333-7500, Fax: (407) 333-7730, BBS at (407) 444-9979. Arcada provides an upgrade for Cheyenne users. A full featured 30 day evaluation is available at ftp.arcada.com. Tech support is available via the 800 number. BackupExec is not as full featured as competing products but it handles backups and restores well. [Thx J.M.] A newcomer is SnapBack from Columbia Data Products. Simply backup your existing drive, prepare a boot diskette, plug in your new drive, boot from diskette, run the restore directly to the new drive (no drive pre-prep). Once your server is back up and running with the new drive(s), run the ReSize option supplied with Snapback to resize your partitions. Columbia can be reached at (407) 869-6700, Fax: (407) 862-4725, BBS: (407) 862-4724, cdpi@cdpi.com or http://www.magicnet.net/cdpi [Thx B.F. & John Sharpe] LANShadow from Horizons Technology, Inc, 3990 Ruffin Road, San Diego, CA 92123, (800)828-3808, 619-292-9439, uses a backup server that can backup multiple servers if necessary and can be located anywhere on the network. [Thx E.T.W.] 45-day evaluation copies of Palindrome's Backup Director 4.0 and Storage Manager 4.0 for Netware 4.1 are available from Palindrome, (800)288-4912, 600 E. Diel Rd., Naperville, IL 60563, (708)505-3300. Also, their software can be found at: ftp.palindrome.com or ftp.seagate.com/palindrome [Thanks to P.R. & L.C.H. for this info] H.19.2 Backup hardware products for NetWare Digital Linear tape is 50-100% faster than DAT and more reliable, since the tape floats above the tape heads and are never in contact with it. DLT's work just fine with just about any backup application that you might have. They are ASPI compatible with ASPI drivers readily available. The standard DLT holds 10 GB uncompressed, 20 GB compressed. A new DLT offering was recently released that holds 20 GB uncompressed and 40 GB compressed. The 10/20 GB tapes are about $25-$30 each, the 20/40 GB about $100. Both single drive and jukeboxes are available, with the jukeboxes harder to come by due to the present demand. Quantem owns the rights to DLT, but the technology is licensed to a number of vendors. [Thx G.F.] Note: 8mm tape allows for 1500 passes, DAT - 5000 and DLT - 1,000,000. [Thanks to Shaun@CCNET.UP.AC.ZA for this info] The Intel Storage Express can be equipped with an auto changer DAT drive with up to 24 GB capacity (48 with compression). It can achieve up to 100 MB/sec across the [fiber] network. [Thx B.F.] HP Jetstore 6000: Stores up to 8 GB, 5 drive auto-changer available. [Thx D.T.] Colorado Memory Systems, 800 S. Taft Ave., Loveland, Colorado 80537, (800) 451-4523 Product info/purchase, (970) 635-1501 DOS Tech Support (970) 635-1502 Windows Tech Support, (970) 635-1503 Netware Tech Support (800) 368-9673 QicFAX, (970) 635-0650 BBS H.19.3 Backup methodologies Weekly Full: Five tapes, labeled Monday through Friday. Incrementals are performed Monday to Thursday and a full backup on Friday. The backup horizon is one week. Using ten tapes would extend this to two weeks. Sequential Reuse: This uses five full tapes which are recycled. Four incremental tapes are used from Monday to Thursday, with the Friday full being rotated. This gives a backup horizon of five weeks. Tower of Hanoi: The five full tapes of the Sequential Reuse, relabelled A to E here for brevity, are used as: A B A C A B A D A B A C A B A E. In this method, tape A is reused every two weeks, tape B every four weeks, tape C every 8 weeks, tape D every 16 weeks and tape E every 32 weeks. Using more tapes extends the backup horizon further. Paul Merenbloom method: Tapes are divided into groups of daily, weekly, monthly, and annual. Use eight sets of daily tapes (two-month rolling rotation) and two sets of weekly tapes (104-week rolling rotation). Monthly and annual tapes are set into permanent storage. Cheyenne ARCserve method: Based on a seven-day week, which has at least one full backup that produces a weekly tape. During each week, there can be zero to six daily backups. You have the choice of running full, differential, or incremental backups for your daily backups. Every month a monthly tape is produced. At the end of the year the last monthly tape becomes the yearly tape. This cycle can go on indefinitely. [Thanks to F.H.S. and Mary Bernhardt for this info] In response to a user's desire to re-partition a NetWare 3.12 server into 2 or 3 volumes, Joe D. posted the following: - Backup *everything*, including drive C:, twice. - Load Install, volume options, zap, recreate, reload System & Public The trick will be finding those files, which is best done by acting as a NW client during this entire process, with all files held on another NW server (image of the CD-ROM or floppies in a directory). - Restore from tape. Be sure to restore the bindery first, then files with trustee rights. Most backup programs will not restore space restrictions nor printer queues, so recreate those by hand afterward. - Syscon, change rights - Other details (Mail stuff, login script funnies, etc) But make sure your tape program will restore to a new volume name! Hint, borrow a spare hard disk as a temp volume. [Thx Joe D.] Then, responding to a user who wanted to rebuild a server but who had no backups as yet, Joe D. said: You can try SBACKUP and keep your fingers crossed. Be sure to have a good XCOPY *.* /s/e to some hard drive somewhere. or You can mount the big new volume as SYS2:, run bindfix twice on SYS:, copy everything from SYS: to SYS2: (xcopy from the root). Missing will be open files and system files (print queue things, plus the active bindery files), and trustee rights. Obtain trustee rights with a separate program (Wolfgang Schrieber's utils for a start). Dismount both volumes, swap names, mount the new SYS:. Run BINDREST, then restore trustee rights from that separate program or do it by hand. I indicated privately that Novaback SCSI tape drive software costs less than $100 and works fine on NW 2/3 servers. But ya gotta have a decent backup device, translating into a SCSI tape drive (DAT or maybe Exabyte, or DLT if you have lots of $$$). [Thx Joe D.] H.19.4 Disaster Recovery methodologies Purchase a computer for a user that is equal in capabilities to you server and give it to a user on the condition that when the server dies, this becomes the backup server or used for spare parts. Ths computer would have the same disk, controller cards, and RAM as the server. When developing a disaster recovery plan, write it in the perspective that you were disabled in the disaster and a network consultant from an outside company would be able to restore your systems. Specifically state where disks are located, where passwords are stored etc. Be exact and very detailed . Document, Document, Document! Besides the nightly full backups I do using Legato's Networker, I have a server that contains equal amount of disk space to all my servers. Each night, I use Arcserve and archive to this Server. If my main server goes down, key personal can log onto this one for the purpose of reading databases for customers while we frantically bring up the primary server. We are looking at Vinca and Horizons Technology, LANshadow for online mirrored solutions. These companies have different solutions for different budgets. Take a look at all the products Vinca has. A useful product that many many network administrators might find handy is Open File Manager from St. Bernard Software, 619-676-2277, allowing your backup software to backup open files. [Thanks to Brent Case for this info] Some books on Disaster Recovery include: "Disaster Recovery for LANs: A Planning and Action Guide" by Regis J. "Bud" Bates. ISBNs 0-07-004194-6 HC, 0-07-004494-5, McGraw-Hill, 1994. TK5105.7.B38 [Thx J.H.] "Writing Disaster Recovery Plans for Telecommunications Networks and LANs", by Leo A. Wrobel, 1993, Artech House, Norwood, Massachusetts. ISBN 0-89006-694-9 [Thanks to Russ Bellew for this info] And, of course, Ontrack Data Recovery, (800)555-1212...$ alert... [Thanks to Christopher D. Heer for this info] Installing netware again is kinda easy, so all I do is keep a tape backup of the SYS volume, and a mirror of the backup install in our fire safe. I also mirror the more important system files on a seperate volume. I tried a dummy disaster recovery a while back and this worked ok for me. The most important thing is to take regular backups. [Thx R.C.] If your tape backup software and tape drive are on the server as .NLMs, then you would have to install from the Novell disks, then install your tape backup software, index a tape, then do your restore. I do an archive to a standby server each night so I can log my key users in for viewing vital customer service data while we try to repair the primary server. Don't forget to backup your DOS partition with Startup.ncf and your controller card drivers. My duplexed drives have duplicate 10 Meg DOS partitions so I can swap the Primary with Secondary if I need to. Also, I recommend you document your disaster recovery detail enough so that a local CNE could be hired to restore in case your were hurt badly in the disaster. Document where backup passwords are, physical location of software, tapes, etc. as well as local vendors that can provide equipment & services & procedures for procurement. Include phone numbers, WAN techicians etc. Document, Document and Document. [Thanks to Brent Case for this info] Furthering the above, not only should you document where all diskettes required are located (DOS, NetWare, backup software, patches, and anything else which may be required) but you should make _multiple_ copies of each, and store at least one set off-site. [Thx S.M.D.] "We do nothing clever - since being clever usually takes more time." For virus prevention - On newer machines we simply disable writing to the boot sector of the hard disk via the BIOS. We also disable booting from A: On older machines, we run the "Chip-Away" anti-virus boot-rom from our ethernet cards which prevents writing to any boot sector. For disaster recovery, I keep backup tapes both in a fire safe, and also keep copies well off site, just in case. I also keep hardware copies of my netware startup files, copies of the bindery on floppy, an image of my backup program so that having re-installed a basic netware system from floppy I can quickly restore everything else from the backups. I've tested my "Panic-Kit" and it works well. The main reason I keep it simple is so that it is much easier to keep up to date. If you have a complicated procedure, you'll be less likely to update it as often. [Thx R.C.] You need but a small handful of .EXE/.NLM/.DSK files (including DOS utils) to bring up a server with an empty drive, create the DOS partition, format it, dump floppy contents to it, run SERVER, load disk driver, create the NW partition and volume SYS: etc, load the files needed to run the tape restore program (including IPX comms). They can fit onto a few floppies, as I demonstrated yet again yesterday for another NW 3.12 server. In my case Backup Exec (Arcada) did the restore while running on another server. Think of this floppy collection as your "Emergency Boot Disk for NW", to coin a phrase. [Thx Joe D.] H.20 Resetting Intruder Detection for Supervisor ID The user ID "supervisor" and other Supervisor equivalent IDs can have Intruder Lockout reset immediately by typing "ENABLE LOGIN" at the console prompt...another reason to keep your console keyboard secure, either physically or via keyboard password protection. H.21 Testing that the Login process was successful The following batch file snippet will test the errorlevel returned by LOGIN and attempt to login again if not successful: :Try_To_Login Login %1 %2 IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GoTo No_Luck GoTo Login_Successful :No_Luck echo Login attempt unsuccessful. Trying again... GoTo Try_To_Login :Login_Successful Note: This batch file code assumes that NETx or VLM are loaded correctly. [Thanks to Henrik Olsen for this info] H.22 Cron-like programs NCL.NLM is free, and has timed execution features. It is also handy for other stuff you sometimes wanted to do from the console, but couldn't. ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/misc/ncl.zip For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/misc/ncl.zip [Thanks to Mark Wood for this info] A list of scheduling programs can be found in the "Time Synchronization Solutions Guide" at: http://www.connectotel.com/marcus/ [Thx M.W. S.R.#2] H.23 Anti-Virus programs There are a number of anti-virus products available, including products from McAfee Associates (800)866-6585 (Scan, Clean & NetShield), Symantec (Norton Anti-Virus), Central Point (Central Point Anti-Virus), Intel (800)538-3373 (Virus Protect), ThunderByte (800)968-9527, IBM Antivirus, F-Prot (see detail below) and others. F-Prot 800-423-9147 ($1/machine shareware, $10/machine commercial at the 150 machine level). To receive the latest shareware version, send eMail to: f-prot-update@complex.is with a Text/Body line of: send-as: uue or ftp fp-???.zip at: ftp://ftp.coast.net/SimTel/msdos/virus/ VirusNet LAN is a National Computer Security Association (NCSA) certified system available at ftp://gti.net/pub/safetynet/vnlan.exe. It will distribute virus protection to all workstations, and provides central control of scheduled scans, updates and audit logs. A 3K TSR is provided which prevents infected files from being run or copied, and checks diskettes as they are accessed. The ftp site also lists the 5,600 viruses detected by the latest version, and also contains a slick network security software, StopLight LAN (sllan.exe). [Thanks to Bob Janacek for this info] H.23.1 A bit of an Anti-Virus tutorial >I'm looking for a good virus scanning package that resides on our 3.12 >Servers. We are looking at using Mcafee's Netshield product. Any thoughts >to as how effective this package is? You will get a higher, more accurate detection rate with something based on F-PROT, I think the network version is called Gatekeeper or something. >We will be using their VirusScan on all the workstations to scan all local >drives, and would like something to scan the network. F-PROT and AVP are better at the workstation level. >If by using the virus scan on the local drives, is it even necessary to >have a nlm based product scanning the network traffic for signs of a virus? As usual, it is a matter of trade-offs. If you are trying to detect virus code in network traffic, expect a -lot- of overhead. This level of protection is rarely necessary. No existing virus can bypass NetWare security. From what I have seen, one is not likely to be developed in the near future. You need to look at your needs realistically. First and foremost, you want to be certain that all public and system executables on your server are protected. This can be guaranteed by correct application of trustee rights. Note that a virus executes on a workstation, and that if it does execute, it executes with the same rights as the user who is logged on the workstation. Flag all of the executables on the server that you want to protect RoSh AND make sure that all users have -only- Read and File Scan rights to the executables. Note that management of your users by groups makes this much easier. Also note that before logging in with supervisor rights, you -MUST- be certain that the workstation you are logging in from is clean. Once you have the executables on the server protected, you need to look at your workstations. Most virus infections are Boot Sector infections. They are transmitted when someone leaves an infected diskette in a workstation and reboots. Even if the diskette is not bootable, if it is infected it will infect the workstation's hard drive. Boot Sector viruses are not normally transmitted over the network. Most new computers have a setting in the CMOS setup which allows you to set the order in which the system looks for a boot device. To avoid boot sector infectors, disable booting from diskette. Then, if an infected diskette sits in the drive on reboot, the hard drive is not infected. Kiss boot sector viruses (about 60% of all infections) goodbye. Now, you have the executables on the workstation hard drive to worry about. You need to scan the workstation hard drive to detect these. I am an FPROT bigot, so that's what I use, but I hear that AVP is also good. McAffe does not have such a good reputation, they are ok, but not excellent. But whatever you use, to be effective you must scan the local hard drive -long before- you get to logging into the network. The scanner should be the first executable you run in your AUTOEXEC.BAT. This is because some viruses try to hide themselves once they execute, and you don't want to give them the chance to execute. If you wait until the workstation is logged into the network, you have given viruses a window of opportunity via whatever happens before login (i.e. an infected NIC driver, or LSL.COM, or whatever). So far, we have looked at fundamental virus protection. These are steps that should be taken by -ALL- system administrators. Once you have covered these areas, you need to look at your particular situation. If you need to catch viruses on the fly, then you need to run an anti-virus TSR on the workstations. If you are worried about users storing infected files on the server, then you need to scan those volumes. A workstation-based scanner works fine for this purpose. >Which in your opinion is the best product out there for viruses? Get the best workstation protection you can find, and use NetWare security to protect server executables. I see no need to burden the file server with yet another NLM, although there are conceivable applications of NLMs for convenience. There is nothing inherently better about NLM-based protection over workstation-based protection. [Thx D.H.] HOW TO ESTABLISH A BASIC LEVEL OF VIRUS PROTECTION ON A NETWARE NETWORK On any workstation that has the option, disable booting from diskette via the BIOS setup. This will protect the workstation from boot-sector infections, which account for about half of all infections. Also disable diskette booting on the file server, and keep the file server physically secure. All workstations should be scanned for viruses as the first command in AUTOEXEC.BAT. If you wish to detect viruses on the fly, then run a reliable, up-to-date, anti-virus TSR after scanning. Waiting until after the workstation is logged into the network gives viruses a window of opportunity, via a possibly infected NIC driver, LSL.COM, or other drivers. If you wish to prevent an executable on a server volume from becoming infected, make sure that any user who accesses that file has only read and file-scan rights to the file. There are -no- viruses that can write to a file when it is protected this way. Before logging as a supervisor, be certain that the workstation you are logging in from is virus-free. To be reasonably certain that a workstation is clean, cold boot the workstation from a write-protected, known-to-be-clean system diskette before scanning the workstation with a reliable, up-to-date scanner. [Thx D.H.] You also need to have a program to keep track of the metrics of your hard disk and the files on it so that changes can be identified. That gives you some warning if a new virus that your virus scanner can't recognize hits you. The best program I've found to do this is Integrity Master authored by Wolfgang Stiller. It's available on the Virus forums on Compuserve. It maintains CRC checks on all files you have it monitor. If something changes. you get an alarm. The only problem with that is that it's somewhat after the fact. [Thx S.P.#2] H.24 How can I keep my server on time? NetWare servers are notorious for losing time as the server is often too busy handling other interupts to always catch the clock interupt. One way to keep the server on time is to synchronise it with a TCP/IP timeserver. This can be done with RDATE.NLM from Murkworks. This free NLM requires that TCP/IP is loaded on the server and that the TIMEZONE parameter is set correctly. RDATE will check the time on the timeserver at regular intervals and correct the file server if there is a difference. Also, SYNCTIME.NLM can be run. It occasionally synchronizes the NetWare "soft" time to the hardware clock inside the PC. [Thanks to Olger Diekstra for this info] NetWare 4.x includes the ability to keep all servers' clocks synchronized, within some margin of error. In fact, it _requires_ it, as NDS uses timestamps to track what data needs to be replicated to other servers. Also, if you have one NetWare server which you keep set with the correct time, you can have other 3.x servers follow its time using SYNC.NLM. [Thx. S.M.D.] H.24.1 What is my TIMEZONE? Netware's TIMEZONE variable works backwards from the rest of the world. The default timezone is US Eastern Standard Time, GMT-500 which has TIMEZONE=EST5EDT. For Eastern Australian Standard Time, GMT+1000, it's TIMEZONE=EAT-10EDT. For Central Australian Standard Time, GMT+930, it's not supported on NetWare 3.1x servers - only whole hour zones are allowed. TIMEZONE must be SET before loading CLIB. [Thanks to Gordon Keith for this info] H.25.1 NetWare Memory Requirements -- Time To Worry? Free Cache Buffers (as shown on the console MONITOR display) ought to stay above 50% of original cache buffers (ie. above half of the total memory). If they are below 50%, then you need to add memory. H.25.2 NetWare Memory Requirements -- How Much Is Enough? A Novell Application Note Supplement published in December, 1994 entitled "Calculating Memory Requirements for NetWare 3 and 4" stated "The server memory calculations included in NetWare 3 and 4 documentation are out-dated and in some cases produce wildly incorrect requirements." The Application Note Supplement mentioned previously included a more detailed worksheet for calculating server memory requirements. The same worksheet can be used for both 3.x and 4.x versions of NetWare. Even this worksheet is inadequate in many cases, for example when CD-ROMs are mounted as NetWare volumes. A separate Application Note Supplement contains additional considerations, but no definite forumlae, for multiple Name Space support. The worksheet, with additional comments and instructions follows: STEP 1: DETERMINE THE FOLLOWING SEVEN VALUES FOR YOUR SERVER V1. Enter the total megabytes of disk connected to the server:___MB For example: enter 1 for each MB, enter 1024 for each GB. Do NOT include CD-ROM volumes that'll be mounted as NetWare volumes. These have their own memory requirements not adequately covered in these Novell formulas, and will be calculated later. V2. Calculate megabytes of useable disk space connected to server:___MB If you are mirroring or duplexing all partitions this will be one-half of V1, otherwise copy V1. V3. Enter the server's volume block size (4, 8, 16, 32, or 64): ____KB V4. Calculate disk blocks/MB (Divide 1024 by the value V3):____Blocks/MB The Blocks/MB can be determined using the following table: Block Size (KB) | 4 | 8 | 16 | 32 | 64 | -----------------+-----+-----+------+------+------+ Blocks/ MB | 256 | 128 | 64 | 32 | 16 | V5. Calculate the total disk blocks (Multiply V2 * V4):____Blocks This calculation assumes that all volumes on a server have the same block size. If you have various block sizes, separately calculate the number of blocks of each size, and add the number together to get V5. V6. Enter the maximum number of clients attached to the server:___Clients Be sure to include as clients such devices as printers with built-in network connections or other external print servers, mail servers, application servers, and gateways that reside on computers separate from the file server but need to be "logged in" to the server. V7. IF SUBALLOCATION IS ENABLED, enter the maximum number of files that will reside on the server:_____Files STEP 2: CALCULATE YOUR SERVER'S BASIC MEMORY REQUIREMENTS Line 1: Enter the base memory requirement for the core OS:_______KB Enter 2048 for NetWare 3, or 5120 for NetWare 4. Line 2: Calculate the memory requirements of the NetWare Media Manager (Divide V1 by 10):_______KB Line 3: If File Compression (NetWare 4.x only) is enabled, enter 250, otherwise enter 0:________KB Line 4: If Suballocation (NetWare 4.x only) is enabled, calculate the required memory, otherwise enter 0:_________KB Multiply V7 * .005 (or divide V7 by 200). Line 5: Calculate the memory required to cache the FAT (Multiply Line V5 * .008):_________KB Line 6: Calculate the memory requirement for file and directory caching using the following table:________KB This calculation assumes a 0.4MB file cache per client memory requirement. The number decreases as the user size grows, based on the assumption that there is increasingly repetitive use of shared data already in the cache. Less than 100 clients V6 * 400 Between 100 and 250 clients 40,000 + ( [V6 - 100] * 200 ) Between 250 and 500 clients 70,000 + ( [V6 - 250] * 100 ) Between 500 and 1000 clients 95,000 + ( [V6 - 500] * 50 ) Line 7: Enter the total memory (KB) required for support NLMs:________KB 2,000 KB is recommended by Novell for BRIEVE (700), CLIB (500), INSTALL (600), and PSERVER (200). Almost all servers will require these, although INSTALL is probably only needed occasionally and could be loaded only when needed. If you will allocate memory to Btrieve's own cache over the default amount of 256 (an option available with Btrieve versions 6.x), add the additional amount to the 2,000 value. If you will be loading TCP/IP on the server, add XXXXXX KB. Line 8: Enter the total memory (KB) required for other services:_______KB Other services include NetWare for Macintosh, NetWare for SAA, NetWare SQL, OracleWare, NetWare Management System, and so on. The memory requirements should be listed in each product's documentation. STEP 3: CALCULATE YOUR TOTAL MEMORY REQUIREMENT Line 9: Sum Lines 1 through 8 for your total memory requirement:______KB Line 10: Divide Line 9 by 1024 for a result in MB:______MB If you will not be loading additional Name Spaces or using CD-ROM volumes on your server, you are finished. Optional Name Space support requires additional memory for directory caching. Each directory entry is 128 bytes long. NetWare caches the DET in 4 KB blocks, each containing 32 entries. When only DOS Name Space is loaded, accessing a directory entry for one file automatically brings the directory entries for 31 additional files in the same subdirectory into memory. Client requests to access any of these directory entries are then serviced out of memory without requiring another disk read. When another Name Space is loaded, each file is given a second directory entry for the necessary Name Space information. Ideally, all the Name Space entries for a particular file are kept together in the same block. This is a good reason for adding name spaces when you create the server, and not after - if you go back and add a name space later, then the DET entries for each file that exists at that point will be in two separate places. The original entry for the implicit DOS namespace will be wherever it was created, and the second entry for the other namespace will be in whatever was free space at the time you added the second namespace. Files which are added after that time will generally have their directory entries placed together. [Thx S.M.D.] With two Name Spaces loaded, a block can only hold directory entries for 16 files. With three Name Spaces, there are ten files per block (with two wasted entries), and eight per block with four Name Spaces. Because of this, clients' disk access speed will decrease noticeably as additional Name Spaces are loaded if the same amount of memory is allocated to caching directory entries. Having multiple Name Spaces loaded does not increase the memory used to cache the files themselves, only memory caching the DET. Thus, to accomodate the additional memory needed to prevent loss of performance, increase the number in Line 6 above by 25 percent for each additional Name Space loaded. [NetWare 4.10's CDROM3.EXE's] CDROM.NLM uses a 64 KB block size for all CD-ROMs, reducing the memory needed for FAT caching. To calculate memory needs for CD-ROM volumes, use the following methods: [Thx S.M.D.] Divide the total size of all files on the mounted CD-ROM volumes (in megabytes) by 10 to get the kilobytes required for the NetWare Media Manager:______KB Divide the total size of all files on the mounted CD-ROM volumes (in megabytes) by 8 to get the kilobytes required for caching the FAT:____KB Add the above two numbers, plus 80 KB for each CD-ROM volume. For example, for two CD-ROM volumes with a combined 1 GB (1,024 MB) of files, the result would be 102 KB + 128 KB + 160 KB = 390 KB. This calculation does not allow any additional memory for file and directory caching of the CD-ROM; it is assumed that this requirement will be met by the formula in Line 6 above. If you have a server with a large number of CD-ROM drives atached compared to the hard disk space installed, this result may be inadequate. Going through the above exercise will result in a memory requirements estimate usually several times the amount from the "quick and dirty" formula in the Red Book. It is a much more accurate number, but still an estimate. [Many thanks to Jerry Heidtke for this info] H.25.3 NetWare Memory Requirements -- And The Real World Of course, any memory formula can only approximate the actual network and disk traffic you'll be experiencing when the server is really serving your users and/or other tasks (database/WWW/DNS server, routing, antivirus protection...) you assign to it. But if your server is up and running, you can just look to see if it is has enough memory _at the moment_ you look at it. At the console, load MONITOR and go to the Cache Buffers. Check the "LRU sitting time" item. "LRU" stands for "Last Recently Used page of cache memory" and the number is the typical time your data spend in the cache (without being accessed) before the cache is needed elsewhere. That is, if somebody wants to access the same data later, it will be reloaded from the disk. If the value is less than 10 minutes, you should definitely add some memory. The recommended values (sources vary) are within the range from 12 to 20 minutes. More than one hour means you don't need that much memory ...at the moment. Be sure you're checking LRU sitting time during the utilization peaks, when there are the maximum number of users actively attached. [Thanks Jirka Hanika] H.26 How to wire 10base-T cable using RJ-45 jacks To wire 10base-T cable using RJ-45 jacks and 8-wire unshielded twisted pair cable, depending on your specification, here's what you'll need: | Color Code | 568A | 568B --------------+--------------+------+------ Pair 1: tip | white/blue | 5 | 5 ring | blue/white | 4 | 4 Pair 2: tip | white/orange | 3 | 1 ring | orange/white | 6 | 2 Pair 3: tip | white/green | 1 | 3 ring | green/white | 2 | 6 Pair 4: tip | white/brown | 7 | 7 ring | brown/white | 8 | 8 If you are starting with new wiring, use 568B. If you are using old AT&T installations (pre M11 and M100 jacks), use 568A. [Thx D.E.C. & H.K.] H.27 Advantages of purging files In theory, manually purging files on NetWare should not be necessary. Experience has shown, however, that there are advantages to purging. Purging files that are temporary in nature allows other more essential deleted files to have a longer "deleted but not purged" (ie. still salvageable) life. Also, any \TEMP directories, and all print queue directories (those funny numbered ones under SYS:system), should be marked with FLAGDIR [in NetWare 3.x, FLAG in NetWare 4.x and not possible in NetWare 2.x as it only stores one deleted file per user, and this is lost on logout] as "purgeable" e.g. FLAGDIR Z:\SYSTEM\10000001 PURGE [Thx S.M.D.] One other benefit of purging files manually (or explicitly with FLAGDIR) before NetWare is forced to re-use their space is that NetWare seems to run better (probably from less RAM wasted keeping track of deleted files). This improvement may be more noticeable in NetWare 3.x than 4.x. Finally, the command SET MINIMUM FILE DELETE WAIT TIME = x timeunits can be used to set the time that must expire before NetWare considers deleted files purgeable. [Thanks to J.P. for this info] H.28 Moving user rights/passwords from server to server There is no way to dump users out of the bindery with a password, there just isn't a function call to read the bindery password. There are several programs which will read all the user's properties (except password) and dump them into a file compatible with MAKEUSER. Assuming that users on all the servers will stay the same, there are two ways I know of to transfer users to a new server. If you are totally reorganizing your servers, it would probably be best to start from scratch. Method #1 - use your tape backup. This is also a great time to test it. We found out this way that ours wasn't handling the binderies correctly. Method #2 - copy the bindery. You'll need something like the Trustee or TList program from JRButils or WSchrieb packages. Then, run Bindfix on the old server TWICE so that the .OLD files are current. Then BindRest the .OLD files on the new server. [Thx B.F.] Note: The text files from the above utilities don't quite match the format needed by GRANT, so some simple hand editing will be necessary before GRANT will accept them. Best to practice this before committing to the formal server change. [Thx Joe D.] Note2: The program from JRBUTILS mentioned above, for listing trustee assignments, is TrstList. It has an option to list the trustees as 'grant' commands (the version to be released in Nov, 1995 can also output as 'rights' commands for 4.x), so no editing is required unless of course you are moving to a volume of a different name. ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/apps/jrb400a.zip For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/apps/jrb400a.zip [Thx J.R.B.] H.29 Spanning a volume across multiple hard drives There are probably only two situations where you want to do this: - If you have redundancy, in the form of RAID, mirroring, or duplexing - If you simply don't care about the data you're putting on that volume. If you span a volume across multiple hard drives, essential information such as the file allocation tables, the directory entry tables, and even the files themselves will be split across the drives. The loss of any single drive destroys the _entire_ volume, as some of each of the above types of data will be lost. That's right - not just the data on that one drive, but the _whole_ thing. Probably not what you want! Keep in mind also that the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) of a number (n) of identical drives is the MTBF of one drive divided by n. That means n times as many failures, on average, in any given period, and each one of those failures takes your whole volume with it. Each time it fails, you'll be recreating the volume and restoring all that data. Oh, and if it's your SYS: volume, you'll have to reinstall NetWare first. [Thx S.M.D.] H.30 Load Balancing NLMs The Novell document TID1200307, dated Mar 8/95, suggests: To load balance between NICs on a Novell network , you can use one of three (sic) different options: (1) NLSP - NetWare Link State Protocol, found in ftp://netlab1.usu.edu/pub/mirror/odi/ipx_rtr/ipxrtr.exe or ftp://ftp.cc.berkeley.edu/pub/nlsp/ipxrtr.exe [Thx S.R.#2] (2) Kalpana - 1-800-488-0775, provides inbound and outbound load balancing to provide additional server capacity without routing. (3) NSI - Network Specialists Incorporated, 1099 Wall St. West, Lyndhurst, NJ 07071, (800) 775-4674, (201) 804-2799, (201) 804-8400, provides recovery and load balancing, reports when interface card or link is down. (4) Ornetix - 800-965-6650, provides load balancing, peer level access with full security and network redundancy. [Thx J.Z.H.] H.31 Should I use SCSI or IDE hard drives on the file server Go SCSI. Here are three reasons: (1) Want to add, say, a tape drive and a CD-ROM on the server? Most (though not all) ATA host adapters allow a maximum of two devices, and the rest stop at four. In normal use, SCSI goes to seven. Also, the selection of SCSI tape drives far exceeds that of ATA tape drives. And at the moment, at least, there's far more support for devices other than hard drives connected to SCSI than to ATA. Want to run a CD-ROM out of your server? You have many options if it's SCSI, and not many (presently zero, I think, though I'm not 100% sure) if it's ATA. Check the spec sheets for BackupExec, ARCserve, etc. and see how many ATA tape drives they support, and then see how many SCSI tape drives they support. (2) SCSI is inherently well-suited for multitasking systems. The server can fire off several requests to the drive, and then go off and do something else (like servicing someone else's requests out of cache) until the drive has the data ready. Heck, the drive doesn't even have to return the results in the same order as they queries, if it can find a more efficient way to handle them. For ATA, not only can it only handle one request at a time (that's one in total, not one for each drive), the CPU generally sits idle while that request is being handled. (3) Want to talk top speed? The most common SCSI these days is Fast SCSI-II, at 10 MB/s. The most common ATA is plain old ATA; I'm not sure how fast that goes, but it's significantly lower. The next step up for SCSI is Fast Wide SCSI-II, at 20 MB/s. No ATA variant gets that high; they top out at 11 or 13 MB/s or somewhere in that vicinity. I'm not saying that either one can sustain this (hard drives aren't anywhere near that quick yet, so it would take several drives per host adapter to sustain that transfer rate even for sequential access) or that most systems will show any significant performance difference, but someone is sure to say "ATA transfer mode blah blah blah runs at this speed, and SCSI only does 10," so let's compare apples to apples. [Thx S.M.D.] TECHNOLOGY INTERFACE THEORETICAL THROUGHPUT # OF DEVICES/BUS SCSI Parallel 5 MBps (8-bit bus) 7 (excluding HBA) Fast SCSI Parallel 10 MBps (8-bit bus) 7 (excluding HBA) Wide SCSI Parallel 10 MBps (16-bit bus) 15 (excluding HBA) Fast-Wide SCSI Parallel 20 MBps (16-bit bus) 15 (excluding HBA) UltraSCSI Parallel 20 MBps 8 or 4 (depending on bus length) Wide UltraSCSI Parallel 40 MBps 16,8,4 (depending on bus length) Ultra2SCSI Parallel 40 MBps (16-bit bus) 15 (excluding HBA) Wide Ultra2SCSI Parallel 80 MBps (32-bit bus) 15 (excluding HBA) SSA Serial 80 MBps per adapter 127 devices/setup FC-AL Serial 200-MBps (dual-channel) 127 devices/setup USB Serial 1.5 MBps 127 Firewire Serial 50 MBps 63 FC-EL Serial 200-400 MBps (estimated) [Thx S.R.#2] H.32 Expected bandwidth from "10 Mbit" ethernet Lab tests have shown that an Ethernet network can approach 95% utilization. [Real world percents are more in the 50% to 60% range, before collisions make efficiency head toward zero.] Much depends on the number of nodes on a segment(s), the length of cable(s) and the packet (frame) size. A 167k eText version of _Measured Capacity of an Ethernet: Myths and Reality_, by Boggs, Mogul and Kent, DECWRL 88/4, is available at: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/misc/ethercap.zip For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/misc/ethercap.zip Also, the 336k _Binary Log Arbitration Method_, by M. L. Molle at: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/misc/blam.zip For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/misc/blam.zip And Don Provan's 20k _Ethernet Frame Type History_ (heavily quoted in section L of this FAQ) at: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/misc/ethernet.txt For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/misc/ethernet.txt [Thx Joe D.] H.33 Performance considerations of Bridges versus Routers Many have turned to multiport routers to divide their traffic into smaller units (segments), even though routers introduce a significant delay when processing the lan segments. Routers also complicate the network management tasks as the segments created by the routers should exits as a separate logical subnets. A virtual lan minimises this problem by acting as a bridge rather than routing the traffic for different segments within the same virtual lan. Allowing multiple segments per subnet means fewer routing bottlenecks. Virtual lans (layer 2) are based on a bridged architecture that transmits media access control (MAC) source and destination addresses. Traffic between virtual lans is handled by the router which provides security, filtering and traffic management. There are two kinds of switching hubs: * Port-Switching hubs: In this case the ports are grouped together and assigned to segments via network-management software. Port-switching hubs broadcast traffic to the group of ports which the recipient is a member of, limiting unnecessary traffic. +----------------------+ | __________|____User A | | | | ------------------ | | () () () () | | ------------------ | | | | __________|____User B | | | | ------------------ | | () () () () | | ------------------ | +----------------------+ * Segment-Switching Hubs treat ports as separate sements and forward the packets from port to port. They also transmits packets directly to their destination, thereby increasing the network capacity. +----------------------+ | () () () () () () () | | () () () () () () ()------User A | () () () () () () () | | () () () () () () ()------User B | () () () () () () () | | () () () () () () () | +----------------------+ Each switch reads the incoming frame and learns the MAC address associated with each virtual lan. If the end station broadcast or multicast frames these packets are distributed to all ports in that end station's virtual lan. Pure Ethernet switches cache the MAC address and information about which port the mac address is connected to. In virtual lan switches, a virtual lan number is added to the mac and port information in the forwarding table. There are three methods of conveying the information: * Signaling Messages With Signaling Messages, when an end-station powers up, the local switch learns its virtual lan number and sends a high priority number to other switches so that they learn and update their forwarding tables. In a large network this synchronization process can become a bottleneck. Every time a station powers up it sends its frame, and this message must be propagated to all switches before the traffic can flow. Along with this synchronization the switches also send the cache table so that each of them can also update their table. This can cause the tables to grow to 1000 bytes or more. * Frame Tagging With Frame Tagging, a short tag is appended to the start of the frame that passes the backbone. The tag identifies the virtual lan it belongs to and also ensures that the switch knows the port group of each frame. The addition of this tagging information can cause these frames to become longer than Ethernet's maximum frame length, thus violating the ethernet's media protocol. Bridges and other forwarding devices treats these as long frames which means that these packets are discarded. Switch vendors implement prorietary schemes to deal with this problem. * Time-Division Multiplexing Switches that handle virtual lans at layer 2 can also use the standard spanning tree algorithm. The spanning tree algorithm is a very simple low-level protocol that is fine for bridges but it can be a problem when scaled up to a large virtual lan. Switch vendors also provide proprietary solutions to deal with this problem, typically by adding enhancements to the algorithm to make it faster and more robust. Because layer 3 virtual lan switches can route and bridge, the need for routers in workgroups and departments is greatly reduced. One protocol problem is the inability to handle non-routable protocols like NetBios and LAT. Layer 3 switches cannot sub-divide non-routable protocols into differnet virtual lans. Layer 2 virtual lans are protocol-independent making them better suited to subdivide nonroutables. Despite the problem with non-routable protocols, layer 3 virtual lans have more intelligence and processing power than layer 2 devices. Layer 3 devices also provide additional features such as filtering, where you can block or pass traffic by looking at the user defined frame fields. For example, switches can keep RIP/SAP traffic and Telnet packets off certain segments within a virtual lan. With IEEE 802.10 secure data exchange it is possible to merge some layer 2 strengths within layer 3 virtual lans. This scheme specifies techniques such as fragmenting and then reassembling of frames that exceed the maximum allowed by the ethernet media protocol. Because of this 802.10 can convey virtual lan information accross a number of media types including FDDI, Ethernet, Token-Ring and HDLC networks. As a rule of thumb, throughput decreases and latency increases as the amount of processing the switch has to perform to forward the packets to the correct port increases. The packet handling process involves looking up the MAC address which is a layer 2 function. Layer 2 can provide very high performance if the packets are being shunted between stations that belong to the same virtual lan. When the nodes are attached to different segments, the packets have to traverse over routers which could mean degradation. When handling 64-byte packets, ethernet switches deliver maximum wire speed rates (14,880pps) A minimum size packet of 64 bytes takes 51.2 microseconds to propagate. Each frame also has an 8-byte preamble, not considered part of the frame, that takes 6.4 microseconds to propagate. Finally there is a 9.6 microsecond inter-frame gap. If you divide one second by the sum (67.2 microseconds), you get 14,880, the max number of packets a 10mbps can deliver. A virtual lan can also take a performance hit when it handles larger packets. Cut-through switches process packets at a constant rate, regardless of packet size. Under Cut-Through switches read the mac address (the destination address) of each packet and then immediately send the packet along. The Cut-Through procedure reduces the latency or delay for a forwarding operation. In Store-and-Forward each incoming packet is stored in a memory buffer at the incomming switch port before it is forwarded to its destination. Loading the packet into the buffer takes time, the larger the packet the longer the delay. CRCs are used to ensure that frames are well-formed. Store-and-Forward switches discard RUNTS (short frames typically disrupted by a collision) and JABBERS (overly long frames sometimes caused by defective NICs). Cut-Through switches do not filter out these bad frames. Jabbers often look like broadcast frames to a Cut-Through switch and can cascade all over the network if nothing is done to eliminate them. Today switches are implementing both Cut-Through and Store-and-Forward techniques. Initially the switch will be setup as Cut-Through but when the packet rate increases beyond user-defined frame settings the Store-and Forward method will be used. With Full-Duplex ports the ethernet connection does not have to listen for collision, as no other traffic source is there to collide with. For this reason a connection can freely receive and transmit at the same time. If everything is balanced properly you can attain 20mbps. "100vg" eliminates packets collisions and permits more efficient use of network bandwidth. It does this by using a demand-priority access scheme instead of the CSMA/CD scheme used in 10BaseT ethernet and fast ethernet. It also requires users to install new network adapter cards, hubs and/or switches. In each round-robin polling sequence, every port on the network has the opportunity to send one packet. When a tremendous volume of traffic is on the network, the hub or switch can take a long time to service normal requests, possibly causing timeouts and congestion. Thus, no matter which access method you use, depending on the traffic, things are bound to slow down and cause latencies. [Many thx V.K.R. and J.R.B.] Here are some URLs for switching equipment vendors: http://www.3com.com (3Com, look at LP2016, LP2500 & LP6000) http://www.ctron.com (Cabletron) http://www.cisco.com (CISCO, look at the Kalpana Switches) http://www.smc.com/homepage.htm (SMC, look at the Tiger Switch) [Thx J.M.#2] H.34 Data Transfer by Bus type The following table originally appeared in Network VAR: BUS WIDTH Speed Capacity (bits) (MHz) (Mbps) ISA 8 8.25 4* ISA 16 8.25 8.25* EISA 32 8.25 33/40/80 VESA 32 CPU (40) 160 (max) MCA 32 8.25 33 PCI 32 33 132 PCI 64 33 264 PCI 64 66 528 * Uses two clock cycles per transfer [Thx J.H. & S.M.D.] H.35 Maximum wiring lengths For 10Base2, the limits are: Maximum length per segment: 185m Minimum length PC-to-PC: 0.5m ? Maximum PC's per segment: 30 If you are talking about the yellow cable (10Base5) Maximum length per segment: 500m Minimum length PC-to-PC (2 vampire taps): 1.5m ? Maximum PC's (vampire taps, per segment): 50 [Thx M.M.] Remember that a separate metal conduit or raceway will prevent HF signals from interfering with the signals in Cat 5 cable and vice-versa. Most cabling systems manufacturers have guidelines on distances to powerlines. Ask them for it. Consider installing enough wall-outlet's per square meter to run _everything_ except lightbulbs and coffee machines over the new cabling system, this includes your telephone system. The people who maintain your switch will appreciate being able to move people with phones in minutes, not days. You might pay a lot more in advance on cabling but a good cabling system will pay for itself because of less money spent on: - Money spent on extra hours (extra personal) - Time spent on changing cable - Materials - Finding cabling problems - Calling in a cabling contractor - Asking us to help :-) [Thx H.K.] Also on CAT5 structured cabling: - 3 feet from all electrical in runs over 50 feet - 1.5 feet from all analog/hybrid voice cable - minimum bend radius 1.5" - sloped approaches to wall stubs (conduit to box) rather than straight drops [Thx L.D.] H.36 AC Power and its effect on file servers For good info, go to: http://www.apcc.com/ and http://www.mcp.com/que/developer_expert/urnetworks/ch18.htm [Thx S.R.#2] H.37 Negative numbers from CHKVOL -- yup, time to worry Immediately you should run VREPAIR "at least twice" and "at least once more after you get no errors from it". [Thx Joe D.] H.38.1 Running Netscape across NetWare (vs dial-up) Running Netscape from home is pretty straightforward. You just need a Winsock.dll like the shareware version from Trumpet or others. Running Netscape across NetWare requires you load TCPIP.EXE as part of the client boot process, then having VTCPIP.386, WLIBSOCK.DLL and WINSOCK.DLL in the Windows System directory, with no duplicates of these files anywhere else. The latest version of TCPIP.EXE will auto-load VTCPIP.386, otherwise place a device=vtcpip.386 in the [386 Enh] section of system.ini...then follow the netscape documentation. [Thx M.M.] H.38.2 Running Netscape wherever (without dial-up facilities) To run Netscape without dial-up facilities, see MOZOCK.DOC and obtain MOZOCK.DLL from the same directory where this FAQ is stored. [Thx F.P.M.] H.39 Help Desk software for NetWare HelpStar, (800)-563-4357 [Thanks to Lewis M and Richard Szabo for this info] DOMINION by InterApps, Inc. Operates within Windows 3.1x, Windows NT and OS/2; compatible with Netware, VINES, LANtastic, LAN Manager, and NetBios- based LANS. A native Windows application that was designed by people in the Help Desk and network management field, it takes full advantage of the Windows environment, including support for full-motion video, CD-ROM and sound. It includes modules for problem, inventory, change and financial management. It's relational database system provides limitless storage and high speed retrieval of text, images, and binary data. It also provides the capabilities to work the SQL-based database engines like Oracle, XDB, SQL-Server, IBM's DB2 and others. Contact the Help Desk Institute (HDI): The Help Desk Institute, 1755 Telstar Dr., Suite 101, Colorado Springs, CO 80920-1017, Tel: (719) 531-5138. H.40 Deleting very large "sparse" files >We have a 4 GB sparse file on our server and like to remove it but FILER >can't do it Sparse files are basically files which have 'holes' in them. They appear to be a lot larger than the data they contain. To repair sparse files, obtain TSparse: ftp://netlab1.usu.edu/pub/mirror/apps/tsparse.zip and ftp://netlab1.usu.edu/pub/mirror/apps/tsparse.txt [Thx V.K.R., R.J.L., R.C. & S.R.#2] H.41 Slow mount of 50 GB drive array >A 50GB disk array is used with a Netware 3.12 server. However, the >server takes 20 minutes to mount the disk array during the startup. >How can I speed up the mounting? How about a faster disk I/O channel? NetWare v4.1 also is much more efficient during the boot process, so perhaps an upgrade is in order. >I know that it does a consistency check on the two sets of directory >tables and FATs to verify that the two copies are identical. Only one directory table. FATs are indeed verified. >Are there any other [checks], and can those be turned off? Yes, no. What may be the largest factor in the apparent slowness you describe is the rest of the volume mounting process. First, NetWare builds a copy of the entire FAT of every volume in RAM. Second, it builds an index, called a Hash Table, of the Directory Table and caches the index in RAM. Believe me, you don't want NetWare to *not* do those things!!! Not with as much as 50 GB of data! These functions are core to the NetWare operating system, and there's no way to turn them off. [Thanks to Roger Kresge for this info] H.42 Clearing "Not-Logged-In" license robbers This isn't a problem on NetWare 4.x, as NOT-LOGGED-IN's don't count against your user count. For NetWare versions prior to 4.x, try: ftp://ftp.iastate.edu/pub/pc/novell/utilities/nliclear.zip [Thx B.S. and S.M.D. for this info] Also, SHUTDOWN will forcefully disconnect users, with an optional time delay and accompanying warning messages. ftp://ftp.cdarchive.com/pub/WIN_UTIL/16A/SHUTDOWN.ZIP or ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/.4/os2/sysutil/shutdown.zip or ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/.d1/mirrors/os2/sysutil/shutdown.zip [Thx S.R.#2] ZZClear is a freeware NLI clearer. If the number of NLI's is less than 2 [i.e. all N-2 connections are logged in], it will force the NLI clear. Has options for not clearing the boss's connection or other station requiring protection from clearing. ftp://ftp.uni-marburg.de/pub/netware/nlms/zzclear.zip and ftp://ftp.uni-marburg.de/pub/netware/nlms/zzclear.doc [Thx J.P. & S.R.#2] H.43 Running alternatives to MONITOR on the server console Novell wrote SS.NLM and CPU-UTIL.NLM and put them in the Public Domain "back at the dawn of time". When loaded (one autoloads the other) they create a histogram of CPU utilization which makes a great screen saver for monochrome server consoles. You can find them on: ftp://ftp.icfrnet.unp.ac.za/pub/novell/ [Thanks to Ron Neely & S.R.#2 for this info] H.44 NLMs allowing access to NetWare Server C drive The NetWare NLM SDK contains NWSHELL.NLM that allows DOS type access to any partition on the server, including the DOS partition. It asks you to log in before it lets you on the Netware partitions and will also let you log in to other servers. It is located on the CD as: novsdkcd_4:/nlm/novm/nwshell [Thx J.B.] Also, there is MountDOS.NLM for NetWare 4.1 that mounts DOS partitions as NetWare volumes which can then be mapped from any workstation. MountDOS eases updating and backing up the DOS partition software. It supports DOS and NetWare commands including: dir, md, cd, NCOPY, NDIR, VOLINFO, FILER; utilizes the Netware cache, supports access to multiple DOS partitions, provides file locking, has tight security restrictions, supports NETX, VLM & Client32 access, and NDS Users/Groups. Midnight Technologies, CIS: 76451,1527, 76451.1572@Compuserve.COM [Thanks to Alain Krucker for this info] Avoid NCL.NLM, it appears to crash servers when unloaded. Try JCMD, it simulates many DOS commands at the console prompt. It can be found at: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/apps/jcmd_135.zip For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/apps/jcmd_135.zip [Thx Joe D.] The Novell Consulting Toolkit has such an NLM called Network Command Center located at: http://members.aol.com/dssol/home.html "I have yet to use it, but heard good things about it at a Netware Conference." - D. R.B. [Thanks Dante RandBenson & S.R.#2 for this info] Filer.nlm is a file manager designed to allow network administrators the flexibility to access Netware and DOS file systems from a Netware 3.x or 4.x file server console. Freeware: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/cdubois/filer.htm H.45 NLM to delay loading of AUTOEXEC.NCF NLMs DELAY.NLM is the program. Just 4 KB, it can be downloaded at: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/netwire/novuser/07/delay.zip For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/netwire/novuser/07/delay.zip [Thanks to Jiri Polach for this info] or ftp://ftp.novell.co.uk/pub/netwire/novuser/07/delay.zip or ftp://ftp.pht.com/.5/gamehead/oldies/delay.zip or ftp://ftp.data-io.com/dataio/betaalgs/delay.zip or ftp://ftp.cis.ohio-state.edu/pub/jain/papers/delay.zip [Thx S.R.#2] H.46 Checksum errors showing up on MONITOR.NLM screen This indicates Bad Packets. The first place to look at is your wiring plant. Not all twisted pair wiring is created equal, and less stays that way over time (no squeezing it, no tight bundles, need to recrimp the crummy RJ45's from time to time). If the wiring plant was incorrectly installed (above, plus wrong pairing, plus wrong punch down blocks, excessive length, or even not even Cat 3 wire) then all kinds of troubles ensue. Twisted pair lan wiring is NOT Telco junk and can't be treated that way; and it is more susceptible to maltreatment than coax. Before jumping too far, also check the hubs (replace with a spare) since flakey hardware occurs too. To check the wiring plant either you really know what you are doing so visual inspection tells a lot, or you rent/ acquire a high calibre cable tester (hand held box) with perhaps an operator attached (see below for story). The checksum is at the very end of each packet and that's the place least likely to be damaged in transit unless the system is well out of spec. Packets do get damaged, no matter how good the wire/fiber and electronics are. Damage can be subtle, enough so to pass the hardware CRC check since software is also involved. Thus we should be running IPX with checksums turned ON. We can't use IPX checksums with Ethernet_802.3, so those are losers. UDP/IP packets are similar, and Sun runs NFS without UPD checksums (but don't you make that mistake). Lest folks think I'm just talking, have a look at an serious IP machine and see the errors revealed by netstat. I provide my student lab consultants with a show and tell on lan wiring. That lab uses coax (better than twisted pair, cheaper too). I demo ordinary packets with a good Tektronix sampling scope, plus variable attenuators, coax stub extensions, inserting another kind of coax, etc. Twisted pair is much more difficult to demonstrate, but near end cross talk (NEXT), a major spec/issue of lan cable, is easy to show by watching the receive pair as the board transmits. More background info: Twisting wire isolates a pair from the world better than not twisting the wires, yet radiation still leaks away. The impedance of the wire changes as the twisting changes, and the coupling to the world (other wires) changes too. Thus squeezing wires in a bundle increases NEXT, a very bad thing. Unwrapping wires to fit RJ45 plugs and punch down blocks does the same, so great care is needed to do this just right (not to mention using the proper punch down blocks). Transmitted data goes on one pair, received data on another. If we scramble the wires so twisted pairs are not Tx or Rx then major trouble from NEXT (cross talk) ensues. As we go from 10Mb/s Ethernet to 100Mb/s (and you will go too) these problems scale up by a factor of 10. Cat 3 cable is just adequate, Cat 5 is better, and the difference is in the way wires are bundled in the jacket. So how come there is such a cost difference? Because they can get away with it, that's why, and some [net-god] system managers insist upon validation of NEXT, impedance and attenuation when the wiring is installed. [Thx Joe D.] Note: 100Base-T and 100VG-AnyLAN can run on: Cat 3, 4, and 5 UTP; Type 1 STP; and Fiber. 100Base-T maximum hub-to-node distance is: 100 meters (UTP & STP), and 2000 meters (Fiber). 100VG-AnyLAN max. hub-to-node distance is: 100 meters (Cat 3 UTP), 200 meters (Cat 5 UTP), and 2000 meters (Fiber). [Thx S.R.#2] H.47 Using EMM386 with Boot ROM (ie. diskless) workstations You need to use the undocumented /y=[d:][path]EMM386.EXE switch to point to where a copy of EMM386.EXE can be found _after_ the boot image has been discarded. [Thanks to David Brisbane and George Spencer for this info] H.48 Fixing NetWare partition problems when Mac support NLMs are used Reboot the server. Run SERVER.EXE with -na -ns, load your hard disk drivers, load VRepair, then switch back to the console (using Alt-ESC) and load V_MAC.NLM as it is needed for proper repair of Mac namespace (fork) stuff. [Thanks to Joerg Trawinski for this info] H.49 BSOD (Black Screen of Death) fix If you are finding that machines running Windows and connected to NetWare are halting with just a black screen (of death) then: - Replace the device=*vtd entry in the [386 Enh] section of SYSTEM.INI with device=vtda.386 (vtda.386 is available as WW0863.EXE from ftp.microsoft.com) - Add a TimerCriticalSection=1000 or =10000 entry to the [386 Enh] section of SYSTEM.INI, as per the March 95 issue of Novell App Notes: "If you are running a version of DOS Requestor earlier than version 1.20, or if you are running a version of VNETWARE.386 dated earlier than 8-17-94, you will need to add to the [386 Enh] section of SYSTEM.INI a "TimerCriticalSection=10000 line. The VNETWARE.386 driver for the DOS Requestor 1.20 defaults to 1000, which better supports mobile products." [Thanks to Wayne Fee and F.H.S. for this info] Consider downloading NOV-BSOD.DOC (Section S.4) for more complete information. H.50 Running a World Wide Web server on NetWare Note: Web server software is included with IntranetWare at no extra cost compared with just NetWare 4.11. http://www.glaci.com/info/glaci-httpd.html [Thanks to Walter Blocher for this info] http://www.american.com American Internet Corporation, 4 Preston Court, Bedford MA 01730 Voice: 617-271-9200, Fax: 617-275-4930, info@american.com or sales@american.com. [Thanks to Michael Haag for this info] http://www.cpu.lublin.pl/yawn/ or email: info@cpu.lublin.pl [Thanks to Artur Urbanowicz for this info] H.51 Testing the strength/security of your users' passwords CRACK works on copies of the bindery and uses a dictionary to attempt password cracks. It is available at: ftp://ftp.mersinet.co.uk/pub/novell/freeware/crack.zip The extra (huge) dictionary is also there as: ftp://ftp.mersinet.co.uk/pub/novell/freeware/huge.zip [Thx S.R.#2] SMARTPASS is another password checker for NetWare and uses a database of 130,000 common words. It is available at: ftp://ftp.uni-weimar.de/pub/network/security/smrtpass.html [Thx E.S. & S.R.#2] H.52 Faster (but riskier) re-mirroring after server crash When the server abends and needs to remirror the drives, you can speed up the remirroring process by a factor of 3 or 4 if you disable "read after write verify." Many will argue this practice, but when the server crashes most users are very irate when they can't log into the server due to a remirror process...Of course, when the remirror process finishes, be sure to set "read after write verify" back on! You can change this via MONITOR. [Thx J.N.] H.53 Sharing a modem across a NetWare network Novell Connect v2.0, there are 2 port and 8 port versions. WINPort from LanSource. Contact roger@lansource.com. [Thanks to Michael D. Perry for this info] Spartacom make a nice product, the name is SAPS. Check out: www.spartacom.nl [Thanks to Frans Meyer for this info] H.54.1 Using the Debugger to determine the cause of the ABEND a. Write down the Abend message. b. Drop into the debugger using the key sequence. c. Display the running process using the .R debugger command and note the running process information. d. Display your location using the ? command and note the NLM and function information (if available). e. Display the control registers using the RC command and note the contents of CR2. f. Quarantine the running thread by setting EIP to CSleepUntilInterrupt (case sensitive). g. Try to restart the server using the G command. h. If you're successful, retry your client connections, close your applications, and allow all pending I/Os to flush to disk. If you're unable to restart the server at this point, use the information you've gathered to ascertain which module may be generating the fault, reboot and proceed to step j. i. Down the server using the DOWN console command. j. Begin troubleshooting by removing the buggy software module, or load the module inside a protected domain using domain.nlm. [Thx D.B.] H.54.2 Help for Debugger commands At the debugger prompt type .h to get help on all debugger commands. # .h .A Show the abend or break reason .C Do a diagnostic core dump to disk .D Show page directory map for current debugger domain .D Show page entry map for current debugger domain .F Toggle ON/OFF the developer option flag .G Show the GDT .H Show this dot help screen .I Show the IDT .I2 Show the IDT for Processor 2 .M Show loaded module names and adresses .L off Show linear address given page map offsets .LA [] Find all aliases of linear-address .LP [] Find all linear mappings ofphysical-address .LX addr Show page offsets & values used for translations .P Show all process anmes and adresses .P[L] Show
as a process control block .R Show the running process control block .S Show all screen names and adresses .S Show address as a screen structure .T Show address as a TSS structure .TS Show GDT[segnum] as a TSS structure .V Show server version Where: addr is the address off is the offset laddr is the linear address paddr is the physical address [Thx D.B.] H.55 Network management utilities Managewise is the market leader - there's a huge advantage in not needing $20,000 workstations just to run the console. From what I've seen it's fairly comparable to HP Openview. IBM also has an entry, but the name escapes me. [Thx R.G.] DOMINION by InterApps, Inc. Operates within Windows 3.1x, Windows NT and OS/2; compatible with Netware, VINES, LANtastic, LAN Manager, and NetBios- based LANS. A native Windows application that was designed by people in the Help Desk and network management field, it takes full advantage of the Windows environment, including support for full-motion video, CD-ROM and sound. It includes modules for problem, inventory, change and financial management. It's relational database system provides limitless storage and high speed retrieval of text, images, and binary data. It also provides the capabilities to work the SQL-based database engines like Oracle, XDB, SQL-Server, IBM's DB2 and others. Contact the Help Desk Institute (HDI): The Help Desk Institute, Suite 101 - 1755 Telstar Dr, Colorado Springs, CO 80920-1017, Tel: (719) 531-5138. H.56 Only see 2 GB of disk space in DOS/Win when U know HD/volume is bigger DOS uses a 32-bit signed integer to keep track of free disk space. The largest quantity which a 32-bit signed integer can represent is 2 GB less one byte. Therefore, that's the most free disk space that you'll see the DOS DIR command report. That doesn't mean that the space isn't available; use CHKVOL (3.x and below) or NDIR /VOL (4.x) to confirm that there actually is more disk space available to you than DOS indicates. With DIR, you will see your free disk space appear to stay the same, at slightly under 2 GB, until such time as your actual free disk space drops below 2 GB, and then the result of DIR will be correct. [Thx S.M.D.] H.57 Patching NetWare to handle the Year 2000 and beyond See: http://www.novell.com/p2000 [Thx John Canfield] I. SAMPLE CONFIGURATIONS I.1 Comparison between NETX, VLM & Client 32 NetWare Client Software [VLM are now becoming the past, Client32 the future, and NETX obsolete.] VLM are a lot of different modules rather than one big program. You can choose which modules to load and where they are to be loaded (i.e. conventional, UMB or extended memory). VLM does for NETX what ODI did for IPX.OBJ, and provides more configuration options so the move from NETX to VLMs should be considered as inevitable as the move from IPX.OBJ to the ODI model. You can use VLMs on NetWare 3.11 but to use packet burst technology you need to get and load PBURST.NLM (available from ftp.novell.com and its mirrors). Nothing else is required on the server but if you do not get and install the related security enhancements, you will need to add the command SET NCP PACKET SIGNATURE OPTION = 0 to your AUTOEXEC.NCF immediately after the line that loads PBURST.NLM. Also, you will need to configure your clients to use ODI drivers before they can use VLM as VLMs do not work with IPX.OBJ/IPX.COM. Programs needing packet driver software are supported, via ODIPKT.COM, and Windows requires a different NETWARE.DRV for VLMs than for NETX. The DOS client kit can be ordered from any Novell vendor. This gives you a site license for VLM v1.1 and Novell's TCP stack, including WINSOCK.DLL. Price is $US99. You then upgrade to version 1.2 by getting the following files from ftp.novell.com: NWDLL2.exe WINDR2.exe and VLMUP3.exe. While there you may wish to pick up NET33X.exe for your NETX clients. For more information on VLMs, (installing, configuring, etc.), consult the manuals you get with the DOS client kit. To obtain the latest ODIPKT.COM (now at version 3.0) ftp://hsdndev.harvard.edu/pub/odipkt To obtain the latest ODITRPKT.COM (version 3.0 for Token Ring) ftp://dc.cis.okstate.edu/pub/oditrpkt By the way, ODIPKT version 3.0 takes hex arguments, earlier versions used decimal values. [Thanks to Gordon Keith, S.M.D. & James Harvey for this info] There are huge architectural differences between them. VLM is a proper DOS redirector, doing most of its work underneath DOS. NETX is a shell, which grabs requests before DOS even gets a chance to see them. VLM is modular, allowing you to load only the bits you need; NETX is monolithic, and the whole thing must be loaded. VLM will perform a large degree of memory management on its own; you have to do this yourself for NETX. There's only one VLM.EXE whether you want it in conventional memory, XMS (and this time it really _is_ XMS, not HMA), or EMS; you have to keep track of separate versions of NETX for these three different configs. From a features viewpoint, VLM supports Personal NetWare, NDS (an option with NetWare 4.x), and bindery (NetWare 3.x and below, or bindery emulation on 4.x); NETX supports only bindery. VLM includes support for packet burst; no current NETX shell does. The corresponding Windows drivers for VLM have more functionality than those for NETX, too. NETX is faster on small operations, as it doesn't suffer the overhead of DOS or of swapping bits and pieces of memory around. VLM is faster on larger operations, as it has packet burst. NETX generally (though not always) eats up a bigger chunk of conventional/UMB memory; with VLM, you may find yourself with more free conventional memory, depending on machine configuration. Back up one workstation and upgrade it. Beat on it and try out all of your software and make sure it's working perfectly before you roll it out. Chances are it will work once you figure out all the new stuff, but there _are_ still some apps that either won't work at all with VLM or require some adjustments to your configuration. You definitely want to find out about these before rolling VLM out to your workstations. Also, make sure your 3.11 server is up-to-date on the packet burst, packet signatures, large internet packets (if applicable), and LAN drivers. If it isn't running PBURST, you won't get packet burst working and you'll probably notice a slight _drop_ in performance when in reality you should notice an _improvement_. If you don't have all of the updates for packet signatures, then make sure you disable them entirely at the server, or else all hell will break loose. LIP isn't going to make a difference unless there are some clients who need to go through a router to get to your server. And get the latest LAN drivers because packet burst is going to increase the stress on your server and there have been plenty of people posting here that setting up packet burst exposed weaknesses in the old LAN drivers they'd been using. NETX is in the past. VLM is the future. [Thx S.M.D.] I.2 Sample NET.CFG for conventional NETX shells Net.cfg is the preferred shell configuration file and replaces the obsolete Shell.cfg. Most troubles using net.cfg are from incorrect syntax, spelling, and punctuation (just the things you loved in school). Important points. Major section headings are flush left, and their qualifying minor clauses must be indented. The word "protocol" is used twice in completely different and unrelated ways; beware. "Protocol" major sections are for programs which locate the section by the name after the word protocol; subclauses are for that program. The numbers 8137, 0800 etc. are for the indicated protocol kinds only, never to be mixed or used with other kinds. 8137 is only for IPX. Minor clause Bind .. is needed only if two or more logical board choices are available for a given protocol. There can be NO originality in the construction of these lines; if it's not documented then don't say it. For more details on NET.CFG, see Kermit Project file MSKERM.BWR at: ftp://watsun.cc.columbia.edu/kermit/a/mskerm.bwr OR ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/kermit/mskerm.bwr For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/kermit/mskerm.bwr # Example file NET.CFG for conventional shells (MS-DOS) # # A "#" in column 1 or a ";" symbol makes what follows on that line a # comment. Do not try to use ":", "*" or "rem" as a comment character. # The following PB buffers entry is only applicable to the elicit BNETX PB buffers=6 show dots=on signature level=0 # Use only if more that one indented "protocol IPX..." line exists protocol IPX bind #1 # Use only if more that one indented "protocol IP..." line exists protocol KERMIT bind #1 # Below is for Novell's Lan WorkPlace for DOS Protocol TCPIP PATH SCRIPT d:\lwp41\net\SCRIPT PATH PROFILE d:\lwp41\net\PROFILE PATH LWP_CFG d:\lwp41\net\HSTACC PATH TCP_CFG d:\lwp41\net\TCP ip_router 129.123.1.254 ip_netmask 255.255.255.0 ip_address 129.123.1.145 tcp_sockets 16 udp_sockets 8 raw_sockets 1 # nb_sessions 4 # nb_commands 8 # nb_adapter 0 nb_domain usu.edu # bind slip_ppp Link Support Buffers 7 1500 MemPool 2048 Link Driver NE2000 Frame Ethernet_II Port 360 Int 5 Protocol IPX 8137 Ethernet_II Protocol IP 0800 Ethernet_II Protocol ARP 0806 Ethernet_II Protocol RARP 8035 Ethernet_II Link Driver SLIP_PPP DIRECT YES BAUD 9600 OPEN ACTIVE TCPIPCOMP VJ PCOMP YES PORT 3F8 INT 4 FRAME SLIP # FRAME PPP Protocol IP 0800 SLIP link driver IPTUNNEL gateway 129.123.1.123 I.3 Sample NET.CFG for VLM redirectors # Example file NET.CFG for VLM redirectors # Don't forget to say LASTDRIVE=Z in CONFIG.SYS! # Comments begin with a ; or a line starting with a # # Following 6 lines for a 3C507 on a particular machine Link Driver 3C507 Int 10 Port 320 Mem d0000 Frame Ethernet_802.3 Protocol Ipx 0000 Ethernet_802.3 ; # Following 4 lines for a 3C507 on a particular machine Protocol IPXODI Bind 3C507 SPX Connections = 5 IPX Sockets = 20 ; NetWare DOS Requester Auto Reconnect = OFF ; OFF=Do not load auto.vlm Average Name Length = 8 ; Shrinks connection table Cache Buffers = 4 ; 0=Removes cache (default pretty ; good) Cache Writes = Off ; ON=Faster writes but lost data ; integrity if there's a crash. Checksum = 0 ; 0=OFF=speed up high quality links Connections = 8 Dos Name = MSDOS First Network Drive = F LIP Start Size = 1500 Load Conn Table Low = Off ; Recommend trying defaults for the load low pair shown below ; [with low loading giving best performance but least low memory] Load Low CONN = On ; OFF=Put connection table in high mem Load Low IPXNCP = On ; OFF=Put IPX material in high memory Load Low NETX = Off Load Low REDIR = Off Local Printers = 1 Long Machine Type = IBM_PC Max Tasks = 50 Message Level = 3 Message Timeout = 540 ; Name Context is read for DS only. ; Name Context = "O=USU" ; ? Joe ? Netware Protocol = NDS,BIND Network Printers = 3 Pb Buffers = 1 Pburst Read Window Size = 128 Pburst Write Window Size= 64 ; Preferred server is read for Bindery only. Preferred Server = _Your_Server_Name_Here_ ; Preferred Tree is read for DS only. ; Preferred Tree = _Your_Tree_Name_Here_ Print Buffer Size = 64 ; 0=Disables PrtSc CAPTURE, saves 64b Print Header = 64 Print Tail = 16 Read Only Compatibility = On Show Dots = On Signature Level = 0 ; 0=Don't load security.vlm True Commit = Off ; OFF=let server buffer writes ; VLM SELECTION, *** ORDER SENSITIVE *** ; For Bindery include bind and netx, omit nds. ; For Directory Services include nds, omit bind and netx. use defaults=off ; OFF=Use explict list of vlms which follow vlm=conn.vlm ; Connection tables vlm=ipxncp.vlm ; NCP over IPX vlm=tran.vlm ; Transport services worker vlm=security.vlm ; Security, optional ; vlm=nds.vlm ; DS, NCP Directory Services vlm=bind.vlm ; Bindery, NCP vlm=nwp.vlm ; Transport services worker vlm=fio.vlm ; File I/O vlm=general.vlm ; General support routines vlm=redir.vlm ; Redirector vlm=print.vlm ; Print services, optional vlm=netx.vlm ; Bindery, shell compatibility ; vlm=rsa.vlm ; DS, RSA encryption, optional ; vlm=auto.vlm ; DS, autoreconnect/retry, optional ; vlm=nmr.vlm ; Managment responder, optional Netx show dots=on ## Below this line material (board drivers) is the same as for NetWare 3.11 ## net.cfg. Please do not trash with unrelated commands. Link Support Buffers 7 1500 MemPool 2048 etc. as for regular shells. [Thanks to H.K. and Joe D. for this info] I.4 Tuning the performance of the NetWare DOS Requester I.4.1 General Information When tuning the performance of the NetWare DOS Requester, there are generally 2 goals (or a blend of both): - Maximum speed - Minimum memory footprint NOTE: The following is for version 1.20 of the Requester, which ships with NetWare 4.1. NetWare 4.02 ships with 1.10, right ? If you don't use 1.20 yet, then I suggest you upgrade to it. You should get files VLMUP3, NWDLL2 and WINDR2 at your favorite ftp.Novell.COM Mirror. Use the 1.10 docs as a reference. I.4.2 Memory handling As you might read on the NOVELL@listserv.syr.edu (BITNET: NOVELL@suvm) list, the NetWare DOS Requester is a network requester which uses the DOS Int2F redirection interface. VLM.EXE only creates the environment for the modules that actually provide the functionality, i.e. the .VLM files. When VLM.EXE starts, it creates 3 segments: - Startup segment [in real mode memory] - Global segment [in real mode memory or Upper Memory Blocks (UMBs)] - Transient segment [in XMS or EMS] VLM loads a part of the .VLM files in the StSeg but most code goes into the GSeg or TSeg, depending largely on settings in the net.cfg file. The StSeg is cleaned up when VLM has initilized the GSeg and TSeg and the .VLM's are loaded in it. VLM does the memory management and the swapping of .VLM code from TSeg into GSeg - this takes some time and thus speed. The "Load Low" parameters in the net.cfg file determine if that module is loaded in Tseg (= Off) or in GSeg (= On). GSeg gives best performance since it is within the (real mode) 1024 KByte memory boundary but it depends on the amount of UMB's you have available. Play with these, you can change net.cfg settings, unload VLM (VLM /U), re-load and then check memory footprint (mem /c |more), VLM memory status (VLM /d |more) and performance using Perform2. I.4.3 Module loading tuning / general tips For maximum speed on directory searches, you should keep IPXNCP in GSeg by using "Load Low IPXNCP = On" in the net.cfg. For better performance on NETX calls, keep NETX in the GSeg. For better performance on small files, keep REDIR also GSeg. For a better overview, don't use the "Load = ....VLM" line. I.4.4 Packet tuning This generally means tuning NCP Packet Burst and LIP. "Pb Buffers = 1" sets packet burst On, 0 sets it Off. The "Cache Buffers" line determines the amount of packet buffers. You can increase these for speed but it costs GSeg space. The "Read Window" and Write Window sizes are the amount of packets that will pass until an "ack" is required, you should play with these to see the results, they highly depend on buffering of the NIC's that you use. The LIP start size helps when you use routers in your net, set it to the maximum packet size your net can handle. This prevents the Requester from testing your LAN/WAN on the maximum LIP size it can use. Another tip regards NCP searches. I found that the Requester performs better on searching through directories when you increase the "Maximum Outstanding NCP Searches" console set parameter from the standard value of 51 to say, 200 or 300. On NetWare 4.x servers you can use SERVMAN NLM to play with these parameters, but on NetWare 3.x you have to work with SET commands, and put the right one in your NCF file manually. [Thx H.K. & S.M.D.] I.5 An Example STARTNET.BAT for use with the VLM Redirector @echo off set nwlanguage=ENGLISH lsl.com ne2000.com ipxodi /d vlm /mX /v4 /c=c:\nwclient\net.cfg @echo on Notes: /d omits diagnostics responder, saves memory /mX puts shell in eXtended memory, /v4 is extra verbose during loading /c is path to net.cfg in case there's confusion [Thx Joe D.] I.6 Sample Appletalk entries in AUTOEXEC.NCF Here are portions of two autoexec.ncfs for two file servers that appear in the same zone. Lots ofmacs and printers and AppleShare servers appear in this zone as well: file server name GORILLA ipx internal net 80e3c201 load appletlk net=10006 zone={"CIRCA II"} load ne2000 port=300 int=3 frame=ethernet_snap name=public_lab_apple bind appletlk to public_lab_apple net=0-0 load afp file server name whale ipx internal net 80e3c202 load appletlk net=10007 zone={"CIRCA II"} load ne2000 port=300 int=3 frame=ethernet_snap name=public_lab_apple bind appletlk to public_lab_apple net=10004-10005 zone={"CIRCA II"} load afp Note that file server WHALE is defining zone information while file server GORILLA is learning it. J. NETWARE 4.X MATERIAL J.1 Installing Netware 3.12 or 4.0x without a CD-ROM drive (sort of) For NetWare 4.1, Novell has engineered a workaround to get away from the problem of having to deal with a DOS device that you have just "stomped on" by loading a NetWare driver for your host adapter. To install a new NetWare 3.12 or 4.0x file server without a CD-ROM drive you need about 110 MB of disk space on a source file server that is not having 3.12 or 4.0x installed on it and a DOS partition on the server of at least 6 MB, but 15 MB is suggested by INSTALL. You also need a CD-ROM drive to copy the distribution CD to that disk space. But after the CD is copied, you don't need the drive anymore. That's the sort of part! Note that the 110 MB figure only applies if you install English support only. For other language support, you'll need about 500 MB total. Create a volume or directory on the source server, then copy the distribution CD to it. Make sure to get all the subdirectories, empty and occupied, and the file attributes. It wouldn't hurt to verify the copy too. If you are using English only, you may save space by deleting all of the contents of other language directories (German, Spanish, ...). Do not worry about the errors generated during installation about the missing files. Tell the install process to just skip the file it is looking for. Create a 10 MB bootable DOS partition on the target server (standard NetWare install instructions here). Also put an ODI stack and NETX.EXE on the DOS partition. Login to your source server and map a root drive to the volume or directory with the CD contents on it. Change to that drive and start the installation. Whenever you have to enter the drive letter of the CD-ROM drive, use your mapped drive instead. You can complete most of the installation. There will be a warning about your network drive not being available after you define your LAN drivers. This is OK. You just won't be able to 'Copy On-line Documentation...' nor 'Copy Computer Based Training...' just yet. So skip those 2 steps. Also skip the 'Create DOS/Windows Client...', 'Create OS/2 Client...' and 'Create Upgrade/Migration...'. Make sure to create your STARTUP.NCF and AUTOEXEC.NCF files. Exit out of Install, down the server, and make sure the AUTOEXEC.BAT file does NOT start the target server. Reboot the PC. Run the ODI stack and login to your source server again. Map a root drive to the volume or directory with the CD contents on it. Start the server with the '-NA' option. This will prevent the AUTOEXEC.NCF from running and starting up the LAN drivers again. Make sure the SYS volume is mounted and LOAD INSTALL. Choose 'Other Options' so that you can copy the documentation and CBT (Computer Based Training) files from your source server. Make sure to use the proper drive letter. Exit out of Install, down the server, and make sure the AUTOEXEC.BAT file starts the target server like it is supposed to. Reboot the PC. Success. You can use any PC logged into the source server with the proper drive mapping to do all of the 'Create... ' diskettes skipped earlier. [Thanks to John Jobst and S.M.D. for this info] J.2 Dumping your configuration to an ASCII file If, at the : prompt you issue the command LOAD REGISTER -C you get your full configuration dumped to an ASCII file in SYS:SYSTEM. This is a useful undocumented feature of Netware v4.0x. [Thanks to J.P. and John Burton for this entry] J.3 To Upgrade or Migrate to NetWare 4.1 If you UPGRADE from 3.12 to 4.1, rather than MIGRATE, the passwords, as well as trustee rights, are retained. The distinction between an UPGRADE and a MIGRATION is that an UPGRADE installs 4.10 on top of the existing 3.1x or 4.0x system, while a MIGRATION first creates a new 4.10 system and then moves user files and trustee rights onto the new server. You need to migrate if (1) you want to change your volume/disk structure or block size, (2) you want to hang on to the old 3.12 system to facilitate backing out of the 4.1 upgrade if that proves necessary, or (3) you want to automatically eliminate the obsolete 3.1x or 4.0x system files. [Thx D.E.H.] If you have just upgraded and are experiencing problems, search the Novell database at: http://support.novell.com/search/ You can also look at the "Top 20 systems TIDs" on NETWIRE then select #4- Top Server Issues. It goes into depth about abends, high utilization, memory problems, sbackup, rconsole, etc. [Thx J.D.L.] Also, check out "Upgrading to NetWare 4.1 Across a LAN/WAN Using RCONSOLE" in the May 1995 Novell Application Notes. [Thanks to James Powers for this info] The biggest problem with migrate is it's (lack of) speed. Mind numbingly slow. Its not media nor processor bound but only moves 3 MB/min over FDDI! Migrating as much data as you have would take about 40 hours (ie too long). A good tape system could handle it in about 4 hours. We've all but stopped using MIGRATE for our upgrades for this reason. We let MIGRATE create users, groups, trustee lists, etc. then we use the JRB Util's NetCopy to copy the rest. It maintains ownerships. space quotas and trustee assignments. It is on netlab2.usu.edu and mirrors and at: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/apps/jrb400a.zip For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/apps/jrb400a.zip [Thx M.A.] J.3.1 Upgrading to NetWare 3.12 instead of NetWare 4.1 If you have no need for, and no support to offer on, centralized admin of all servers (that's what NetWare 4.x requires) then consider upgrading to NetWare 3.12 instead. NetWare 3.x is easier to learn and maintain and has a much larger array of third party products that will work with it. Resist version-itis, particularly when higher does not equate to better (it's different, by rather a lot). Discard thoughts of disk compression, because you will want to get at files willy nilly and there must be space to expand them. [Thx Joe D.] J.3.2 Upgrading from NetWare 3.11 to NetWare 3.12 Upgrading from 3.11 to 3.12 involves downing the server, copying the 3.12 SERVER.EXE and the other miscellaneous utilities (INSTALL, VREPAIR, etc.) to the DOS boot area, and bringing the server back online. Then just copy the new SYSTEM and PUBLIC files. [Thanks to Mark Motley for this info] J.4 Disable Login Banner To turn off the Red Background banner in NW 4.1 when first logging on use the /nb parameter, ie. login xxxx /nb [Thanks to A.J. Sheehan for this info] J.5 Backing up/Restoring NDS -- multiple methodologies Here is food for thought which comes out of a couple of meetings with Novell and experienced sites: don't use tape to restore NDS material. Syncing NDS will be horrid and very unlikely to produce positive results. Live backups (i.e. replicating partition information) is the only recommended approach. [Thx Joe D.] Follow-up eMail comments were as follows: >From what we have been told by Palindrome's tech.sup. the Novell TSANDS >does not support properly restoring Object-Trustees, thus making it >virtually impossible to do a full restore of a crashed server. The problem is that object IDs are server specific, they are not replicated, and upon restoration via replication new IDs are assigned resulting in (a) loss of all directory and file trustee assignments, (b) loss of file ownership (c) if doing bindery logins the user's mail directories will no longer match their IDs, and (d) if using bindery based printing, queue and print server directories will no longer match their object IDs. These issues are non-trivial. - J.R.B. --------- The Red Manuals do not come close to stating the reality of tape restoring/replicating NDS for crashed servers. Thanks for folding things together John. - Joe D. -------- Adding to my own comment above, here is a "fair use" (I hope) snippet from the Bullets discussion I referenced yesterday. Realize that this lacks the surrounding explanatory material, and the tenor is instruction to developers about what *they* should do, not what NDS does for them. "During an NDS backup and restore, entry IDs change. NDS is backed up by name, and therefore if any portion of any objects (sic) stored in NDS is deleted and restored, the entry IDs for the restored objects will be different. NetWare gets around this issue by allowing trustees to be backed up by name. A similar strategy is necessary if entry IDs are used to correlate file server-centric events with an object. ... It is wise to store the object's name and entry ID somewhere, either as a backup or a reference in the database, to ensure the information is accessible even if the entry ID changes." - Joe D. --------- At the recent Novell Brainshare conference in Sydney, one of the Novell delegates was talking about the robustness of NDS, one of the points that he made was that you never EVER want to run out of disk space on SYS: otherwise transaction tracking shuts off and as a result NDS stops. Because of this you may want to have all your queues on other volumes, no applications on SYS: and compression switched OFF since it can have "unpredictable" effects if there is not enough space to get at an essential file that is compressed. - Adrian Tritschler --------- Aren't the trustee rights still stored in the Directory Entry Tables and these are backed up along with the file system not the NDS? Yes, restoring just the NDS will give you no file or trustee associations, but once you restore the server all should be there. I have not had any success restoring 4.02 servers but 4.1 seem to come back fully, groups and individual trustee rights intact and the NDS pointers. I had problems with 4.02 dropping group objects, and holding the NDS together without generating spurious objects. My test restores were done most recently with Legato 3.1, and ArcServe 5.01g. Most should be able to do a full restore. It's the partials that are a bear...I have yet to be able to restore a subpartition. - Jerry P.S. Procedure for restoring Servers: First Create Server of Same name and Same internal ID Second Restore all Master Partitions, (NDS) Third Restore file system. Run DSRepair until clean. --------- Now that there's been a healthy discussion on this topic, it should probably be pointed out that Novell has a Technical Information Document (TID) that describes the proper sequence of events one should follow when restoring a 4.x server with an NDS compliant backup in a couple different situations (single server tree, multiple server tree, etc.). It is TID 2914422, entitled "Backing Up and Restoring NetWare DS in 4.1" One can get it by visiting their web site and searching the Operating Systems Technical Information Database with the Boolean combo of "nds AND backup", or just entering the TID document ID. One of the more interesting tidbits in it is: if you are restoring a server that has replicas elsewhere on other server(s), set one of the replicas to be the master before beginning the restore, as well as removing all volume and server objects to be resotred from the tree. The TID databases that Novell has available for searching via their web site are and have been an invaluable resource to us. It is surprising that there isn't more talk about them here. - J.B.F. --------- You are right that providing NDS is back in place (via replication or restoration) *prior* to replacement of file data, then trustee assignments and ownership can be restored via an NDS aware backup system. But I stand by my claim that proper replication does not make NDS backup a non-issue because: 1 You still need an NDS aware backup system to back up the trustees and file ownership via distinguished name, rather than via object ID as bindery based backup systems do. 2 You must restore the trustee assignments over all volumes, not just SYS (I'm assuming the reason for restoring is a failure of SYS, or SYS has gotten into a state which is not vrepairable). I believe most backup systems will allow you to restore file and directory trustees without restoring the data. 3 If file ownership is important to your site (it will be if using volume based quotas, and personally, I favour retaining it because it allows you to identify who created files where), then you also need to restore ownership over all volumes. As far as I'm aware, and I may be wrong here, backup systems do not provide the option to restore ownership without the data. Therefore to restore ownership you will need to restore your entire file system. Given that the standard recommendations are to place as little data as possible on SYS and to keep applications and user data on other volumes, restoration of the entire file system will increase the time required to get your server running again by an order of magnitude. Our SYS volumes contain 10-20% of the total space occupied on the server, and its only that high because of Pmail. So, restoring all data would increase restoration time by a factor of 5 which means I would accept the loss of file ownership and simply set the ownership of files and directories to, say, admin on the volumes which were not restored. But if using volume restrictions, there would be little choice but to restore the lot. One change Novell have made in NW 4 and it may be because of the problem of loss of ownership after restoration via replication is to add a console set parameter controlling the ability to extend ownerless files, and it defaults to "on". Under 3.x, ownerless files can not be extended, but fortunately in most cases files they are rewritten rather than extended. 4 If using bindery based logins as I'm sure many educational sites are, then the problem of mail directories being restored with the old IDs as the subdirectory names has to be faced. Either they and the login scripts can be recreated, or particularly if using Pmail, the directories will need to be renamed to match the new IDs, and this will also need to be done in the mac name space if using Pmail for the mac, as Don Hanley from Syracuse University recently pointed out. 5 And then theres bindery based printing. Both queues and print servers use subdirectories of SYS:SYSTEM based on the object ID and these will no longer match. Given that the queue directory name is stored in a property of the queue, there is more to sorting this out than simply renaming the subdirs of SYS:SYSTEM to match the new IDs. I have not checked out the consequences for NDS based printing but I would guess it would restore correctly. Clearly, if you are not using bindery emulation restoration problems are diminished, but even for sites using only NDS logins, restoration via replication is not the piece of cake Novell would have you believe, and you are still dependent on an NDS aware backup. - J.R.B. -------- >What about the utility that Joe Flowers posted about a couple of months >back? Didn't he have a way of backing up and restoring NDS? Does it >suffer from this same flaw? The utility was JCMD which allows you to execute DOS-type commands from the console. It allows you to copy the contents of the NDS directory once DS has been unloaded. This is of some use for backing up NDS in a single server environment, but it doesn't lend itself to being automated because you are working at the server console i.e. unload DS, load jcmd, copy files, exit jcmd, load DS. Maybe Wolfgang Schreiber's RC util would allow the sequence of commands to be executed via a workstation - I have not tried it. In a multiserver environment, JCMD is more problematic. To avoid potential problems, you must ensure that synchronisation is not taking place when DS is unloaded and the files copied from _NETWARE. When restoring these files into _NETWARE, you have the potential problem that Joe D has refered to often when restoring from backup, about placing info from an old epoch back into the tree. I haven't experimented with this, so I dont know if NDS would figure things out and correctly resynch or not. We are planning to use JCMD when we upgrade a server in a few weeks. We want to preserve the existing passwords, change the block size and enable suballocation on SYS. The plan is to perform an in-place upgrade which preserves the passwords, copy VOL3 from the RAID array to a spare disk in the server, delete VOL3, use JCMD to take a copy of the NDS files, rename SYS, do a 2nd install of 4.1 setting up a new SYS on what was VOL3 with 64 KB blocks and suballocation, use JCMD to copy the NDS files from the in-place upgrade into _NETWARE on the new SYS, copy all files from the old SYS. Will this work? Right now I dont know, but it sounds ok in theory and we will do a test run next week. If anyone can point out gotchas I'd like to hear them. - J.R.B. --------- Based on experience, I fear I must take issue with some of the dire projections in this thread about restoring NDS. Our network: 16 4.02 servers (now upgraded to 4.1) Each server on its own segment & partition, connected by T1 & frame relay Each partition has a master and at least 2 read/write replicas SMS-compliant backups of file system only (ie. TSA400.NLM on target servers) Backup system: Intel Storage Express (1.52AE, based on ArcServe 5.01g) I had the "opportunity" to restore two of our servers. Here's the steps: Use PARTMGR to delete replicas on server to be replaced Delete volume objects in NETADMIN Down server User PARTMGR to delete server object Reinstall server from scratch with same name, same internal net # Ensure all patches are loaded, including SMDR and TSA400 Use PARTMGR to place a r/w replica of the server's partition on it Allow replica to sync Using SMS, restore files from Storage Express Result? Trustee assignments were valid. Bindery users logged in without problems. The only downside was print queues: they must be recreated. (Doesn't matter if they're bindery-based or NDS queues; according to Novell, the object ID issue hasn't been resolved with print queues yet, and they must be recreated after a restore. Might as well write that step into your disaster recovery plan.) What are the keys to success here? 1. Valid NDS replication 2. SMS-compliant backup of file system So, I have confirmed faith in NDS replication and restoration. While nothing is infallable, it seems to have worked in these situations. If you only have one 4.x server, you'll have to backup NDS using TSANDS, as well as the file system using TSA400. If you have multiple servers, replicate. - C.M. -------- A while ago, running NetWare 4.01, we managed to ruin both of our servers. Each server held replicas of all partition - but then - they were gone. We tried to restore the NDS by means of two tape backups (via SBACKUP.NLM) of the servers' NDS which were drawn roughly at the same time - to no avail. The servers didn't synchronize and serveral runs of DSREPAIR did more bad than good. We finally resolved the problem by restoring the "root" server from tape only, thereby getting a synchronized read/write-replica back and restoring the second server from this. We observed all the three problems John mentioned above. Conclusion is, tape backup is the last resort, applicable to one server and if there is positively no replica available. - M.C.M. --------- Procedure for replacing a SYS:-volume carrying drive in a NetWare 4.02 server in a multi-server environment: 0) Preparations: 0.1) Write down sizes of all partitions/volumes (look into install.nlm) 0.2) Create a user-to-bindery id list (eg. via NLIST user /B /D) 0.3) Write down all print queue/ print server/ printer specs (e.g. using nlist). Don't forget LPD-based printers. 0.4) Make list of objects (e.g. users and computers), that use this server as default (e.g. using nlist) 0.5) Copy LAN and device drivers, backup system, patches (esp. NDS) and install.{nlm|hlp|msg} to DOS-accessible location, e.g. c:\server.40 0.6) Locate original NetWare CD and keep it handy. Locate and keep a DOS bootdisk with fdisk/format. 0.7) If paranoic: create list of Trustee assignments via "rights". 0.8) Make list of trustees of Volumes objects. 0.9) Make list of "home directory" properties of all users that point to volumes of the server. 1) Run DSrepair until clean 2) Disable Logins 3) Stop the mail system 4) Backup Data via NDS-aware (SMDR-compliant) system (e.g. SBACKUP) 5) Move all NDS' partitions' replicas to another server 6) Set dstrace on all involved servers until "All processed = YES" for all partitions 7) Down server. Remove server from NDS via partmgr. Remove volume objects using NetAdmin. (needed for step 17) Remove print queues using pconsole. (No need to remove print servers or print queues) 8) Down server and copy all files on the DOS partition to floppy 9) Replace HD (or install parallel, if memory permits), partition via fdisk (see 0.1) 10) Copy files back to the new DOS volume 11) Run server.exe only with disk drivers loaded. 12) Load install.nlm and restore NetWare partition and Volumes (see 0.1) 13) Restore all patches (esp. NDS), the backup system, LAN/device drivers. Make sure nobody logs in and you don't fire up the mail system. 14) Restore SYS: (just for the files) 15) Make backup of startup.ncf/autoexec.ncf. Generate a minimal, net-connecting startup.ncf/autoexec.ncf (i.e. leave out all applications). Make sure nobody logs in and you don't fire up the mail system. 16) Restart server 17) Reinstall NDS via INSTALL.NLM 18) Run partition manager and create needed replicas on new HD (Only needed for additional Bindery Contexts) 19) Restore SYS: and all other volumes (for the trustee assingments, volume space restrictions a.s.f.). (Don't forget to add name space beforehand, if needed) 20) Restore what's left: 20.1) Rename mail directories to new Object ID's using list from 0.2 update explicit references to Object ID's whereever necessary (e.g. in customized scripts) 20.2) recreate print system using specs from 0.3 20.3) restore "default-server assignments" using list from 0.4 (e.g. via UIMPORT) 20.4) restore trustees of volume objects from list 0.8 20.5) restore "home directory" properties from list 0.9 (e.g. using uimport) 21) Enable logins, fire up mail system and keep fingers crossed NOTES: - If you have both drives in parallel, you can use a tool like JCMD.NLM for step 14) (but not for Step 19!). - section J.5 of the FAQ makes good initial reading for this task As I understand, DSMAINT.NLM of NetWare 4.1 should take care of 0.2,0.4,0.5,0.9 and the corresponding restoration steps. That doesn't help, however, if your drive crashed, because then you cannot use DSMAINT (maybe for replacing the server's refrences, i.e. 20.5, but this is unclear to me). So a complete backup should perform all of the 0.x steps plus step 8 (Do you?). I wrote some nifty perl scripts to extract the necessary information from nlist ouput, but this is only a partial solution. There'll have to be adjustments to a single-server environment, namely step 5) should read "backup NDS to tape", step 7) is n/a and step 18) should read "restore NDS from tape", but I have neither tested this nor want to. M.C.M. J.6 Handling NetWare 4.x Page Faults The following are some tips for dealing with pages faults on Netware v4.10. Most of the time, the cause of the page fault can be attributed to a particular NLM or driver which may be loaded. As such, it is helpful if you can isolate the offending module. With NW4.1, there is a DOMAIN.NLM that is installed on the DOS partition, which can be loaded in the STARTUP.NCF. When this NLM is loaded, it will catch page faults which occur and isolate the process that caused it. This makes it a lot easier to isolate the cause of server problems because you can bring the server down when it is convenient, rather than having to kick users off in the middle of the day. Keep in mind that after a page fault occurs, even though the DOMAIN.NLM has caught it, you should still bring down the server and restart it. Using the DOMAIN.NLM just prevents the server from crashing and you can down the server properly after-hours. Note: You might notice some abnormal behavior by your server after the page fault occurs, such as high utilization. I would not try to load or unload any modules after a page fault occurs. A suggestion from Novell tech support is to check the memory settings for the server. In particular: Set Read Fault Notification = On Set Read Fault Emulation = On Set Write Fault Notification = On Set Write Fault Emulation = On Almost all of the page faults most will experience are resolved when the 410PT1.EXE and 410IT4.EXE patches are applied. [Thanks to Alex Lee this updated info] J.7 NetWare 4.x block size, compression and sub-allocation If you do turn off compression and sub-allocation, make sure that you change the block size, since it defaults to 64K. Also note that NetWare's caching scheme is most efficient with a block size of 64K, hence the need for sub-allocation. [Thanks to Rick Damiani this info] There is a delay during decompression, at least on a 486DX2/66 server. Once a file is decompressed, it stays that way until a certain amount of time passes, then it is compressed again so if you access a compressed file more than once in the delay before recompression, you only take the performance hit once. This is controllable via SET. You can have the server: (a) decompress the file to disk on the first access, as described above, (b) keep the file compressed on disk unless it is accessed _twice_ within the usual compression period (also controllable via SET), or (c) always keep the file compressed on disk. You can also modify this behaviour for individual files and directories with the FLAG command. [Thx S.M.D.] If your server is low on RAM, it is unable to compress large files and tells you so at the console. Note: Once you have created a volume, there is no way to enable/disable compression on the volume without re-creating the volume. You can flag files to not be compressed on a compressed volume or set compression to occur in 10,000 days to work around this problem. NW 4.1 creates SYS: as being compressed by default. This can be a gotcha. If you do not want this, be careful to specify this when volume SYS: is being created. Compression works well for user volumes, especially if a lot of user files that are infrequently accessed. [Thx D.H.] Compression is a CPU-intensive task, and while it's normally scheduled for the middle of the night, what do you do if you can't find any time that's convenient to do it? For example, you may run a 24x7 operation, or you might not want your CPU eaten up while doing backups. Decompression is also a performance drag but if the server is reasonably powerful, your users probably won't notice the difference. PROBABLY... On my NetWare 4.02 server, mostly for my own use, I don't do administration on it very often, and so it goes and compresses NWADMIN and the large number of DLLs that go with it. The next time I go to run NWADMIN, it takes a minute to launch... Case History: We set up a 4.1 server for one of our clients. After a week or two, he called up and said there was something wrong with his server, because when he went into a file manager and tried to do a directory of some of the stuff he'd put on the server, CPU utilization went way up and the server just started dragging like crazy...yet it wasn't "repeatable". He'd do it again and this time it would work fine. It turned out that he had his file manager set up to read the first little bit of each file to try to determine what was in it. Of course, after a while, files get compressed if they're not used, and so he was forcing the server to go and decompress a whole directory's worth of files just for a dir listing. Once he'd done this to enough directories, they'd all be uncompressed and things would work fine [with zero compression benefit] for a week (the default time before compression) and then it would show up again. Suballocation is a wonderful thing, too, but if memory serves, it needs more memory on the server to keep track of it. Still, I can't see any reason not to use it, because if you're _that_ tight on memory, the problem is a lack of memory, _not_ suballocation. [Thx S.M.D.] J.7.1 Alternative compression products NetSqueeze, The Lan Support Group, (713) 789-0882, compresses files on NetWare volumes according to rules you set up. [Thx D.R.] J.8 Expanding the size of the NetWare SYS volume DSMAINT.NLM, in the latest version of the NetWare 4.x Directory Services, will allow you to expand the size of volume SYS: and is available at: ftp://info.umd.edu/inform2/CompRes/H+S/Software/Novell/Netwire_Files/ [Thx R.J.L. & S.R.#2] J.9 NetWare 4.1 NLM version list There is a Netware 4.1 nlm version list at: http://mft.ucs.ed.ac.uk/novell/techsup/nw410/410nlm.htm [Thx G.J.S.] J.10 NetWare 4.1 patch list There is a 4.1 patch list at: http://mft.ucs.ed.ac.uk/novell/techsup/nw410/410pt2.htm [Thx G.J.S.] J.11 The Novell Consulting Toolkit The Novell Consulting Toolkit is an excellent source of info for NetWare 4.x and for other Novell issues. Those who went to Brainshare 95 were given this invaluable source of info. A four CD subscription is now available from NCS for $300. Email ncs_toolkit@novell.com for more info. The N.C.T. is also available online at: http://www.novell.com/toolkit [Thx D.B. and M.W.] J.12 Gaining access to the Admin password on a NetWare 4.x Tree a. Bring down a server with a copy of the partition containing the admin account, or admin equivalent user. b. Enable bindary emulation in the context containing the Admin account on the server if not already enabled and restart server. c. If bindery emulation was previously enabled see the 'Lost the supervisor password' section of the FAQ (H.14) d. Login using bindery emulation, and run SYSCON from an old NetWare 3.12 server, go to user information, select the administrator's account and change the password. e. Login using NDS, and use the password you just set in step d. [Thanks to Brian Weatherill and D.B. for this info] J.13 NetWare 4.10 SFT-III (System Fault Tolerance III) For those people that need very much up time Novell developed SFT-III. SFT-III is an extension to the fault tolerance that NetWare brings you out of the box. By default each server is equipped with SFT-I (the hot fix). If there is a need for it this can be extended to SFT-II. In order to do so you will have to set up Disk Mirroring or Duplexing. This level will protect against hard disk failures. SFT-III is server mirroring. This will protect against server hardware failure. Because SFT-III is an extension, it means you will have to order it separately. Licences are available in two ways: servers with up to 100 users or for servers with more than 100 users. SFT-III can be installed during the initial installation and an existing NetWare 4.10 server can be upgraded to the SFT-III level. SFT-III does not support the ability to share the load across the two servers (yet). Plans have been made by Novell to support this as well, but they have indicated this will not be available in the upcoming Green River release. It is planned for the next release after Green River. That version will allow disk clustering like Digital's VAX. J.13.1 Considerations Before ordering or installing SFT-III there are some general consideration you should make. Before using SFT-III on your server you should try to figure out if your planned configuration will work with SFT-III. Special attention should be paid to the backup solution, UPS, the MSL (Mirrored Server Link) card and, if needed, the network management software. Another good thing to pay attention to is that the hardware is identical. This may sound obvious, but by this I mean also the revision numbers. Sites that choose to upgrade a exiting NW 4.10 server to SFT-III level and have to order the additional hardware could end up with the same network card (e.g.: NE3200) but with a newer revision level. It is a good thing to have the revision levels (and BIOS dates etc.) on both machines identical. J.13.1.1 Backup Considerations Making a backup with a SFT-III server is possible, but not straight forward. Keep in mind that a backup device is part of the hardware. Therefore, if the primary server (that is the one of the two servers (also referred to as IO_Engine) which is acting as server) fails and your backup device is connected to that server, you will not have any backup device until it is back on line again. Second thing to pay attention to is that the backup unit is connected to an IO_Engine and many backup products address the hardware directly. If that is the case, then the backup software has to be loaded on the IO_Engine. Not every product supports this option. Loading the software in the MS_Engine (this is the "server" part that is protected) can result in an error because no backup device was found. At this time there are only two products that I am aware of that can run on a SFT-III server: Sbackup of Novell (very slow) and ARCserve 5.01g (from Cheyenne). Other products (even ARCserve 6.0) do not run on SFT-III at this moment. J.13.1.2 UPS Considerations It is a good idea to provide each IO_Engine with a separate UPS (connected to different fuses). Otherwise the SFT-III server would be shut down if a fuse blows. UPS management software like Powerchute communicate with the UPS by a comm port. This is also an example of software that can not run in the IO_Engine. At this moment it is recommended to use the Novell UPS monitoring board with the Novell UPS.NLM. This NLM can run in the IO_Engine and needs this board to communicate with the UPS. J.13.1.3 MSL Considerations Novell published a list of certified MSLS (as of 11/94) in their TID21974 on 09JAN95 (unable to locate this anymore). It is a good thing to use a certified MSL card. Novell also recommends to assign to the MSL card's interrupt at the highest priority, 10 being ideal. Try to avoid using interrupts 2/9 or 15, if possible. Interrupt 9 cascades to interrupt 2, and NetWare reserves interrupt 15 for lost hardware interrupts. Also consult the NSEpro for known problems with the selected MSL card (if you have access to it). That way I found the NMSL card we had selected to use in our Compaq Proliant was not a good idea. In general you should use a high speed link for the MSL (either fibber or 100Base-Tx). The advantage of using a fiber MSL link is that you can place your secondary server far away, providing it is also connected to the network. J.13.1.4 Network Management Considerations Many network management utilities (e.g. Frye) try to communicate with the server hardware and also try to examine server statistics. Because these two are split with SFT-III it is not always possible to use these utilities. A network management program should be capable of communicating with the hardware (LAN adapter, processor speed etc.) in the IO_Engine and getting the statistics (# of connected users, buffers, utilisation etc.) from the MS_Engine. The only utility that I am aware of at this moment that can do this is Novell's ManageWise (release 2.0 and higher) J.13.2 SFT-III and Raid 5 Raid 5 is a technology like mirroring and duplexing. What you need to keep in mind is the speed difference between these solutions. I have no practical experience but looking at the technology I would say duplexing works fastest (less CPU overhead). Second would be the RAID 5 solution and slowest would be mirroring (assuming you use the same controller for the mirrored drives otherwise it is duplexing). These last options provide no fault tolerance for hardware failures other than for the hard disk. These solutions can be combined with SFT-III, but personally I would say it is overkill. At the moment a disk fails and you have not implemented any of these technics the primary IO_Engine will fail and the secondary will take over. At that moment there is the possibility to swap the hard drive and bring the IO_Engine up again. Recreating the netware segments and mirrored pairs of drives will do the job. J.13.3 Will SFT-III work on NetWare 3.12 ? As far as I know SFT-III was only available for NetWare 3.11. Anyone that wants a 3.12 SFT-III server should investigate this. It could be that you can only get a 4.x version (all registered 3.1x SFT-III users were upgraded to the 4.x level by Novell). J.13.4 Will NetWare Connect work on SFT-III ? No, NetWare Connect won't run on SFT-III. NetWare Connect uses modems, which are connected to a comm port. The comm port is part of the I/O of a fileserver. That means the modems are connected to the IO_Engine. If the IO_Engine fails, the secondary will take over. Because your modems will be connected to the other IO_Engine these sessions can't be taken over at the time of the switch over. In other words all users logged in by NetWare Connect would lose their connection. This is part of the reason why NetWare Connect won't run on a SFT-III machine. J.13.5 ARCserve 5.01g and SFT-III configuration ARCserve requires a special configuration in order to run on a SFT-III machine. Look at Cheyenne's ARCserve release notes section E. Configuring ARCserve to run on NetWare 4.1 SFT III. You will find that in order to run it on a SFT-III machine you will have to load 2 additional files in the IO_Engine that do not come with ARCserve or NW 4.1. The file IODAI40.NLM is a Novell file (can be found on many BBS's and the Internet). The file ARC_SFT3.NLM can be obtained from Cheyenne. Some time ago there was a message that a NW 4.10 server with all latest patches (Libup8, 410pt3 & landr5) could crash during a remote server backup with ARCcserve. Cheyenne has a patch for it. Keep in mind that using ARCcserve on SFT-III actualy makes a remote server backup. One other issue. We installed the manager on our server and when we ran the Windows manager it looked fine until we tried to work with the databases. It turned out that this was caused by the way ARCserve defines the location of the program. By default it installs the manager in: \\SERVERNAME\VOL_NAME\ARCSERVE\MANAGER\arcserve.exe. After changing this to: F:\ARCSERVE\MANAGER\arcserve.exe and changing the working directory corresponding it all worked great. J.13.6 TCP/IP and SFT-III configuration In order to run TCP/IP on a SFT-III server you will have to set up a separate sub-net for your MS_Engine. The IO_Engines must be configured to act as a router. The MS_Engine will act as an end node. Note that both IO_Engines communicate with THE SAME IP address. TCP/IP Configuration Example +-------------------------------+ | Mirrored Server - MS Engine | | 193.67.129.200 | +-------------------------------+ | | | Virtual LAN ---------------------------------------------- | (IO Engine-MS Engine | Internal Interface) |------------193.67.129.201-----------| +-----------------+ +-----------------+ | IO Engine 1 | | IO Engine 2 | | 193.67.129.131 | | 193.67.129.132 | +-----------------+ +-----------------+ | | | Real Network | ------------------------------------------------ J.13.7 SFT-III Engines swapping It is not normal for a SFT-III server to regularly switch primary and secondary engines. If this happens try looking at the file io$log.err in the system directly. It records the problems if the primary engine and the secondary engine swap. Perhaps there is a hint in there. Look carefully to what happened just before the switch over. If that doesn't help you could try running conlog.nlm. Conlog can be loaded in all three engines and with the option FILE=SYS:\SYSTEM\MSLOG.TXT (etc.) you can specify a different output file for each engine. If the switchover happens again you can have a look at the outputfile(s) to see if something strange happened. J.13.8 MS_Engines produced a different output MS_Engine produced different outputs is a very difficult problem to trouble shoot. It is of most importance to understand the way SFT-III is designed. SFT-III is designed as Hardware Fault Tolerant and has no added ability to protect itself from a software bug. However if you have a system which has this problem, only the secondary machine should be affected unless SET parameters are set to halt both machines. SFT-III Architecture SFT-III was designed so the "event queue" in each machine, primary and secondary, would receive and then process the same events independently. Every instruction that the processor executes comes from this event queue. i.e., if a request is generated for a file from the disk, the request is put on the event queue of the MS_Engine. An identical request is then sent, across the MSL, to the other machine and placed on the event queue of that machine. When the event has been processed, one last consistency check is made, comparing the results of the MS_Engine from each machine. Note here that there is only one MS_Engine that is presented to the user even though each machine has processed the request independent of each other. If the result of each machine is identical, the data is sent to the IO_Engine, packaged into packet form, and sent out the LAN channel. If the results are compared and are not the same, then you get the Abend: MS_Engine Produced Different Outputs. Troubleshooting (according to Novell): The most likely causes of the "Different Outputs" Abend is that, either one machine has traversed a slightly different code path compared to the other machine, or, that the NLM that is running has encountered a variable in the code that has not been initialised. The value of an uninitialized variable is completely random, and therefore increases the likelihood that the MS_Engines are going to produce different results. The "Different Outputs" problem is NOT a hardware problem, and it is not an MSL, LAN, or DISK problem. Use the following questions and objectives to aid in identifying the NLM that is causing the Abend. Questions - What modules are being loaded in the MS_Engine ? - Is there a sequence of events which will cause the server to Abend ? - Can the Abend be reproduced using this sequence of events? - Can a specific NLM be singled out as the cause of the Abend? Objectives: - Stabilise the customer's environment. - Modify one system item at a time. - Reproduce the problem in a non-production environment. - Trace the problem. - Correct the Module. Troubleshooting (based on experience): This problem can also be caused by external devices. In our configuration this problem was caused by a FDDI hub. One IO_Engine was attached by FDDI with a SAS port and the other IO_Engine was connected by FDDI to a DAS port. Another thing to check is whether the MSL link is functioning correctly. Is the speed of your MSL link equal or higher than the LAN link? (using a slow MSL link and a fast LAN link is not a good idea). Also check your interrupt settings. Does your MSL link use a higher priority than the other adapters? Last: Novell recommends NOT to use PCI adapters from different manufactures. Try to use only one PCI card or none at all if possible. J.13.9 Additional information http://corp.novell.com/bg/english/bg000036.htm http://netware.novell.com/discover/ssnwsft.htm http://netware.novell.com/database/docs/wpdb20.htm http://netware.novell.com/discover/can4reli.htm Another good source are the Novell manuals. All related SFT instructions are in the normal manuals/dynatext,particularly Chapter 5 of the installation manual, and Appendix C of the Supervising the network manual. If you have access to it, you could have a look at the NSEpro. It contains several documents relating to SFT-III. J.13.10 Other products of interest: Vinca StandbyServer How StandbyServer (2.0) for NetWare Works Vinca uses a second server as an automatic standby in case the primary machine fails. Data from the primary machine is mirrored to the standby machine using standard IPX protocols. StandbyServer 2.0 uses real-time NetWare disk mirroring to keep exact copies of all system data on both the primary and standby machines. Since StandbyServer uses standard IPX connections to transfer data, a dedicated link is not required, but it is recommended. Any standard IPX board and driver combination can be used as the Vinca link. The data can then be routed, bridged or use a shared, high-speed backbone. The connection status of the Vinca link and the network link between the two machines are constantly monitored to ensure that the primary server is operating . These multiple checks avoid any inadvertent switchover to the standby machine. If the primary server has failed, the standby machine automatically takes over the role of the primary server using the same server name, login scripts, bindery or NDS and IPX address as the failed server. Vinca StandbyServer for NetWare has autoswitch. It automatically switches between the halted main server and the standby machine. With the new 32-bit clients from Novell or Microsoft, the client connection is maintained, not requiring the user to relogon to the switched server after NetWare reinitializes the disks. Users will experience only a momentary pause while the switchover takes place, and their connection to the server is retained. With older client software, the users simply log back into the server using their same name and password as they did on the failed server. For more information on Vinca: http://www.vinca.com [Special thanks to Rob Waterlander for the J.13 SFT-III material] J.14 Mirroring Let's take a moment to categorize. I would like to define the difference between "online" and "near line" redundant systems. An on-line system requires no user and/or administrative intervention to recover from a fault condition. Conversely a "near line" system requires user and/or administrative intervention (workstation rebooting etc.) There are a number of products that will "mirror" servers for you. At the top of the list is: Novell's SFT III (http://www.novell.com) This I categorize as an "on-line redundant system." Advantage: Total protection from hardware related abends; Seamless server "switch over" (Your users will not know that the system has had a failure) Disadvantages: Identical Hardware required; Cannot protect from software abends; NLM's must be specially certified for SFT III. Next are the products I categorize as "Near Line redundant system." Lan Integrity (http://www.netint.com) Advantages: Totally recoverable from hardware and/or software errors. One to many protection. One server can protect many targets. "15 second" recovery time. Backup Solution. Disadvantages: Users must reboot to reestablish services; Does not protect Printing Services. (Additional administrative overhead procedure required, duplicate queues); Does not support advanced Clients (Microsoft's NDS client, Novel 32 Client for 95; Novell 32Bit client for DOS/Windows. (Support expected at some point); ExtraTape Drives required (DLT etc.) Vinca/StandBy 32 (http://www.vinca.com) Advantages: Identical hardware not required; Full NDS, Bindery and advance client support; "Autoswitch feature takes care of swapping in the standby server without intervention from the network administrator. Disadvantage: They claim it will protect against both hardware and software errors. Since there is no seamless "switch over" in either case. it really means that it can recovery reliably from either failure. However if there are corrupted files you will still have to wait for the automated vrepair to be run before the users can user the system. LanShadow for Horizon (Http://www.horizon.com) Advantage: "Network mirroring tool that provides fast recovery from server failures and assures constant availability of critical network data. Runs as NLM and configured to mirror entire servers, volumes directories or individual files, including open ones, to a designated backup server or open space on another production server. LANshadow doesn't require a dedicated backup platform physically connected to and configured exactly like a production server, nor does it require any dedicated hardware or tape drive. LANshadow supports all NetWare environments including 4.x; also includes support for Macintosh name file space." Disadvantage: Server "switch over" not automated. NDS support ??? [Thanks to Colin St Rose for this info] FSMIRROR is a single NLM which runs on each NetWare fileserver. It supports both NetWare 3.12 and NetWare 4.1. Essentially FSMIRROR polls specified locations on another server and checks if any files have changed at that location. If there are changed files then FSMIRROR copies them over to the specified location on the server running the copy of FSMIRROR. It will handle upto 16 different replication paths and can overwrite read only files. Replication times are configurable. The FSMIRROR.CFG file provides for the saving of configuration information should the NLM be unloaded or the server downed. Logging of the files replicated is also included. An auto-reconnect feature is also available should the server being polled go down at any stage. A current copy of FSMIRROR can be found at: http://labs.novell.com/nlec/download/download.htm [Thx G.J.S.] K. SOME USEFUL TEXTS & SOFTWARE K.1 The Novell Companion The author is Jon Johnston. I don't recommend the book to experienced administrators with large networks, but it is a good read for somebody new to LANs or NetWare who doesn't want to read the whole set of red books. I have some disagreements with his recommendations, but I understand them and the reasons behind them, and while I did find a few errors in the book, I've seen a lot worse. Publisher is WEKA Publishing, 1-800-222-WEKA in the USA. K.2 LAN Connectivity from New Rider Publishing Not Novell-specific, but provides wide coverage of the various topologies, etc., and includes sections on NetWare, Lan Manager and Banyan Vines which are interesting reading. Basically, it's a Networking Technologies course in book form. [Thanks to David Gersic for these two titles] K.3 Using NetWare 4 By Bill Lawrence, Que Books, ISBN 1-56529-069-0, $35,00 K.4 Novell's guide to NetWare LAN analysis By Laura A Chappell & Dan E Hakes, Sybex/Novell Press, ISBN 0-7821-1362-1 $44,99 [Thx H.K.] K.5 Novell's SDK CD-ROM The SDK contains online documentation and eText versions of: Netware Client API for C vol 1 and vol 2 Netware Programmers guide for C [Thanks to Viswanath Vadlamani for this info] K.6 EMS Professional Shareware NetWare CD-ROM EMS Professional Shareware is now shipping the 19th (Feb'96) edition of its NetWare shareware CD-ROM, with 2526 PD/Shareware/Free ZIP files and a database describing these and 630 commercial add-ons for NetWare professionals. 4505 Buckhurst Ct., Olney MD 20832-1830 Voice:+1(301)924-3594 Fax:+1(301)963-2708. ems@wdn.com http://www.wdn.com/ems Also, check out a list of NetWare tool producers at http://www.wdn.com/ems/lists/nwutil.htm. [Thanks to Eric Engelmann for this info] K.7 Shareware NetWare API Library A shareware NetWare API library is available via anonymous FTP at: ftp://ftp.coast.net/SimTel/msdos/c/netclb35.zip or any SimTel mirror site. [Thx A.C.] K.8 Quickpath to NetWare 4.1 Networks Quickpath to Netware 4.1 Networks, by Jeffrey F. Hughes and Blair W. Thomas, Novell Press, Published by Sybex, Inc., 2021 Challenger Drive, Alameda, CA 94501. Tel (510)523-8233 or (800)227-2346, FAX (510)523-2373 ISBN 0-7821-1634-5, Library of Congress Card Number: 94-74147. $29.99 [Thanks to Dan Sobel for this info] K.9 Novell Application Notes You can subscribe to receive Novell Application Notes at a cost, outside the United States, of $135.00, by calling 303-297-2725, or writing to Research Order Desk, Attn: Novell Program Admin, 1601 Park Ave. West, Denver, CO 80216 USA [Thx L.C.H.] K.10 The NSE Pro CD NSEPro is available from any Novell Authorized Reseller, or directly from Novell by calling 1-800-377-4136 (United States and Canada). In all other locations, call +1-303-297-2725. Credit card orders may be faxed to +1-303-294-0930 (quoted from the NSEPro itself). [Thx D.K.] K.11 NetWare 4 Administration ISBN 1-56205-240-3. It's about $90 but appears to cover everything. [Thanks to Tome Cole for this info] K.12 Using NetWare 4.1 - The Most Complete Reference ISBN 1-56529-894-2, Que. [Thx D.H.] L. ETHERNET FRAME TYPES: DON PROVAN'S DEFINITIVE ANSWER L.1 Introduction I'm often stopped on the street, metaphorically speaking, and asked, "Hey, Don, what *is* it with these Ethernet frame types." I've determined that the inquisitor generally wants the answer to one of four questions, which I list here in rough order of increasing inflamedness: (1) Physically, what do the four Ethernet frame types look like? (2) Politically, where do the four Ethernet frame types come from? (Or, put more simply, "Why are there four?") (3) If Ethernet_802.3 is so Yucky, should I stop using it? (4) Which Ethernet frame type should I use for IPX? L.2 The Physical Structure of the Four Ethernet Frame Types Here is the physical appearance of the four Ethernet frame types, listed in rough order of creation. I will ignore the purely electronic aspects of the frame, including start bits and Frame Check Sequence. Those are required by the physical hardware and are, consequently, uniform for all four frame types. ===================================================================== Novell Frame Type Designation: Ethernet_II Common name: Ethernet Layout: 6 bytes 6 bytes 2 bytes Up to 1500 bytes +-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------------------+ | Destination | Source | E-type | Network Protocol Packet | | MAC Address | MAC Address | (IPX: 8137) | | +-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------------------+ Comments: 1. Used for TCP/IP as well as many other protocols. 2. Most common frame type in general, although Ethernet_802.3 might possibly carry more packets world wide. ===================================================================== Novell Frame Type Designation: Ethernet_802.3 Common name: "Raw" 802.3 Layout: 6 bytes 6 bytes 2 bytes Up to 1500 bytes +-------------+-------------+--------------+------------------------+ | Destination | Source | Total packet | IPX Packet | | MAC Address | MAC Address | length | first two bytes: FF,FF | +-------------+-------------+--------------+------------------------+ Comments: 1. No protocol ID: Can only carry IPX packets. 2. Distinguishable from Ethernet_802.2 only because the first two bytes of all IPX packets carried on Ethernet_802.3 must be all ones, which makes no sense in Ethernet_802.2. 3. The default frame type for NetWare software until NetWare v4.0 was released. ===================================================================== Novell Frame Type Designation: Ethernet_802.2 Common Name: 802.3 (the 802.2 header is implied by the 802.3 standard). Also Known As: 802.3/802.2, to distinguish from "raw" 802.3 Layout: 6 bytes 6 bytes 2 bytes 1 byte 1 byte 1 byte Up to 1497 bytes +------+------+--------+------+------+--------+---------------------+ | Dest | Src | length | DSAP | SSAP | Control| Network Packet | | Addr | Addr | | (E0) | (E0) | (03) | | +------+------+--------+------+------+--------+---------------------+ Comments: 1. Used for OSI packets on 802.3 networks. 2. Numbers in parentheses are the values used by IPX. 3. The default frame type for the NetWare v4.0 release. ===================================================================== Novell Frame Type Designation: Ethernet_SNAP Common name: 802.3/SNAP or 802.3/802.2/SNAP Layout: 6 b 6 b 2 b 1 byte 1 byte 1 byte 5 bytes Up to 1492 bytes +----+----+---+------+------+------+---------------+----------------+ |Dst |Src |len| DSAP | SSAP | Ctrl | SNAP ID | Network Packet | |Addr|Addr| | 0xAA | 0xAA | 0x03 | (0,0,0,81,37) | | +----+----+---+------+------+------+---------------+----------------+ Comments: 1. Extension to 802.2, indicated by SAP value of hex AA. 2. Number in parentheses is the value used for IPX. 3. Used by AppleTalk. Almost never used for IPX. ===================================================================== L.3 The Political Origin of the Four Ethernet Frame Types Many people want to know why there are four Ethernet frame types. Each one has a story, as I'll explain below. L.3.1 Where did Ethernet_II come from? The frame type NetWare software calls Ethernet_II is basically the original Ethernet frame type. There were actually two earlier Ethernet standards before the final one we know today. The first was strictly experimental and ran at 3 megabit. The second was the 10 megabit Ethernet we've come to know and love, but it had a few kinks which were quickly ironed out in the DIX Ethernet standard (named for DEC, Intel, and Xerox, the three companies that developed it). Because of the earlier standard, the "new" one was often refered to as "Ethernet II", although the actual packet formats were the same for both standards. (The DIX standard had slightly different hardware signaling specifications.) These days, the history has been long since forgotten and no hardware has survived from the pre-DIX Ethernet days, so the currrent standard is now commonly known as simply "Ethernet". L.3.2 Where did Ethernet_802.2 come from? With Ethernet happily deployed around the world, some dim bulb decided to have it blessed by a standards body. The body was IEEE. The result was the 802.3 specification. IEEE just couldn't resist changing the Ethernet framing in a pointless, yet significant way. They eliminated the two byte protocol ID (known in Ethernet as the "Ethernet Type" or "E-type") and replaced it with a two byte length. The protocol ID was then carried within the 802.3 packet in an 802.2 header, keeping in accordance with the overall IEEE 802 plan. The 802.2 header made 802.3 consistent with the other 802 physical layer protocols. This was intended to allow easy use of these datalink layers by the ill-fated OSI protocol suite. Until NetWare v4.0 shipped with Ethernet_802.2 as the default for Ethernet drivers, OSI was the only significant use of the 802.3/802.2 protocol (except for a few uses of the SNAP extension to 802.2, which in Novell drivers is a different frame type: Ethernet_SNAP). Ethernet_802.2 packets are distinquished from Ethernet packets by having a packet length of 1500 bytes or less. Ethernet protocol IDs are all larger than 1500 decimal. L.3.3 Where did Ethernet_802.3 come from? Ethernet_802.3 came from Novell. At some point in the development of 802.3, someone at Novell got a copy of the 802.3 specification. I wasn't around at the time, so I don't know for sure what happened, but apparently it didn't occur to anyone that a legitimate datalink protocol would simply *have* to carry a network layer protocol identification. (Without a protocol ID, the datalink protocol could only be used for a single protocol, which isn't very practical.) Anyway, to make a long story short, some Novell engineer implemented 802.3, but *without* the required 802.2 header. (Novell apologists claim that at some point in the early days of 802.3, the 802.2 header wasn't required. I'll believe that the requirement for 802.2 might not have been clearly spelled out at some point, but I cannot believe that anyone on the 802.3 committee thought 802.3 didn't need a protocol descriminator, so I'm sure the intention was always for 802.2 to be required.) Instead of an 802.2 header, in the Ethernet_802.3 frame IPX simply sits right in the 802.3 packet as the only possible protocol. Now normally you might think that having two protocols, IPX and 802.2, both riding in the same place in the same type of frames would cause a problem. Indeed, there have been isolated cases over the years of nodes expecting 802.2 being confused by arriving IPX packets and vice versa. But by a remarkable stroke of serendipity, IPX packets, which until just recently always started with two bytes of all ones, look ridiculous to properly implemented 802.2 code. (And, on the other hand, 802.2 packets never start with two bytes of all ones, which makes them invalid as IPX packets transmitted in Ethernet_802.3 frames.) This has made the number of problems quite limited, and such bugs in the packet handling code were generally fixed posthaste. L.3.4 Where did Ethernet_SNAP come from? 802.2, being three bytes long, makes the network layer packet badly aligned in an 802.3 packet. In addition, only seven bits are available in 802.2 for discriminating between different protocols, so there can only be 128 different protocols on an 802.2 network. The solution to these problems, driven by the TCP/IP community which -- guess what? -- likes to have its packets aligned and requires several protocols, was SNAP (which stands for something, I just can never remember what)*, which in Novell LAN drivers is the frame type Ethernet_SNAP. SNAP uses a single 802.2 protocol ID (hex AA) to indicate a SNAP packet. The SNAP packet, carried inside the 802.2 packet, has a five byte header followed by the network layer protocol. The five byte header is simply a five byte protocol ID. The first three bytes of the protocol ID are an Organizational Unit Identifier (or OUI) identifying the authority assigning the protocol ID. The last two bytes are the protocol ID according to that authority. This sounds a little complicated, but in practice the three byte OUI is always zero and the last two bytes are always the Ethernet Type code assigned to the protocol for use on standard Ethernet. (Well, ok, there is one exception: AppleTalk, for reasons I cannot fathom, uses some other OUI (presumably Apple's), but still uses the Ethernet Type as the last two bytes. The punch line is that AppleTalk's auxilliary protocol, AARP, uses an OUI of zero. Go figure.) In other words, when SNAP is used, it typically ends up being eight extra bytes of datalink header just to get back to the information that's normally carried in the simple Ethernet packet. Note: The RFCs have it that the acronym SNAP stands for SubNet Access Point, but the word "subnet" muddies the waters. L.3.5 Why does IPX run on all four frame types? Good question. L.4 Should You Use Ethernet_802.3? You probably know by now that since the frame type Ethernet_802.3 does not carry the required 802.2 header, it is not conformant to the official 802.3 specification. You may also have heard about problems on networks using Ethernet_802.3 frames. As a conscientious network administrator, this may cause you to worry about using the Ethernet_802.3 frame type on your network. Here are some guidelines for deciding whether to switch away from Ethernet_802.3. First of all, if you are installing a *new* network, then *don't* use Ethernet_802.3. One thing's for sure: Ethernet_802.3 is obsolete. New networks should use a more current frame type such as Ethernet_II. So the only real question is whether you should convert an existing Ethernet_802.3 network to some other frame type. The first observation is that Ethernet_802.3 isn't generally dangerous. The problems that have occurred because of Ethernet_802.3 frames are few and far between, and generally involve older hardware or software. If you haven't already seen any such problems, then you probably never will. So normally there's no risk to keeping Ethernet_802.3 as a existing network's frame type. In particular, if your Ethernet_802.3 is fairly static and you do not plan any major upgrades or additions to it, then you can continue with Ethernet_802.3 indefinitely without concern. On the other hand, Ethernet_802.3 is an obsolete frame type, as I say. So if you find a convenient opportunity, you may want to switch a network away from it. For example, if you decide to upgrade all of your client nodes from older software to an ODI driver or the VLM client, that might be a good time to also switch to Ethernet_II since you're already making modifications on every node. One consideration that may be important to you is that IPX packets with checksums cannot be transmitted on Ethernet_802.3 networks. In order to take advantage of the data integrity provided by the IPX checksum feature of the newer NetWare releases, you'll have to upgrade your Ethernet_802.3 networks to Ethernet_II or some other Ethernet frame type. Note that a single Ethernet can carry both Ethernet_802.3 and Ethernet_II traffic at the same time. Novell software treats the two frame types as entirely different logical networks even though they are being transmitted and received on the same NIC. A NetWare v3.x or v4.x server with its IPX bound to two logical boards running the two frame types will function as an IPX router between the two "networks". (Notice that there *are* two networks, so they need two *different* network numbers.) This allows you to upgrade Ethernet_802.3 nodes one by one to Ethernet_II. The NetWare router will forward packets from one "network" to the other, allowing the upgraded nodes to continue talking to the older nodes and vice versa. L.4.1 What frame type Joe D. uses My place did that years and years ago, and it is not a big a problem as it might seem. To change, schedule a weekday at 08:00-09:00 when the net will be down and yet all the responsible people will be present to control their boxes. The afternoon before "the day" change all server autoexec.ncf files in preparation for a reboot the following morning. Have area people update user net.cfg files for that same reboot time. Tell users about the affair, and about the net.cfg modification. At 08:00 shut down servers and printer boxes and whatnot. Wait for quiet wires (to prevent those "server X claims network YYY is ZZZ" mistakes. Then start firing up servers, then the tiny boxes, then the users. Real elapsed time is maybe 15 minutes, leaving 45 more to chase down boxed under desks, in forgotten closets, etc. My place is 20K students, 50+ NW servers on the backbone, nearly uncounted small boxes. We've done this massive update thrice: once to kill all Ethernet_802.3 traffic which was zapping machines and causing server crashes, a second case to regularize IPX names and numbers (the Utah Standard) and again to regularize the Appletalk mess. All occassions were trouble free, created only positive comments from users, and the place was better off for it. We are a very tolerant networking outfit. But we simply forbid Ethernet_802.3 packets on backbones. There is no reason at all to use it. We also tell system managers to never use Ethernet_802.2 because it was crippled at birth and has no benefit in its favor other than to support some RPL situations. The result is greater functionality for everyone at no cost, and that's the bottom line. [Thx Joe D.] L.5 Which Ethernet frame type should I use for IPX? One thing we can all agree on: you should *not* use Ethernet_802.3 unless you are connecting an installed network that uses it. Refer to my other note, "Should You Use Ethernet_802.3?", for a complete discussion of Ethernet_802.3. For our purposes here, I assume Ethernet_802.3 isn't being considered. Novell does not, at least to my knowledge, explicitly recommend any one Ethernet frame type for carrying IPX traffic, although perhaps the default frame type of Ethernet_802.2 on the v4.0 LAN drivers might provide a clue. My PERSONAL recommendation, however, is, "When given a choice, run IPX on Ethernets exclusively with the Ethernet_II frame type." While there are a couple of technical arguments I can make in support of Ethernet_II, they really aren't important enough to mention. (But I'm always asked what they are, so I'll explain them in a moment.) The real reason I recommend Ethernet_II is that it's the true Ethernet standard. With only a couple of exceptions, every significant protocol uses Ethernet_II instead of either Ethernet_802.2 or Ethernet_SNAP. [The exceptions? OSI runs on Ethernet_802.2, and the "new" AppleTalk runs on Ethernet_SNAP, although the old AppleTalk runs on Ethernet_II. (I quote "new" because the later version of AppleTalk is actually fairly well established; it's basically just what you'd think of as AppleTalk. Pure "old" AppleTalk networks are rather rare these days.)] The practical effect of Ethernet being the principle framing standard is that you are often using Ethernet_II framing already for some other protocol. If you're running any other protocol (other than OSI), using Ethernet_802.2 for IPX will mean having one more frame type to worry about on that NIC. For example, if you're using TCP/IP on a NetWare v3.11 server, the Ethernet_II frame type is already loaded for IP. If you also run IPX over Ethernet_II instead of Ethernet_802.2, you won't have to reload the LAN driver for a second frame type. Another practical consideration is old NetWare software. Pre-ODI clients and 2.x servers can be switched to Ethernet_II framing using an old, widely available, utility: ECONFIG.EXE. Pre-ODI clients cannot talk Ethernet_802.2. I've heard rumors that some 2.x servers can be configured to use Ethernet_802.2, but I have no idea how that's done or where you get the software components needed to do it. I rule out Ethernet_SNAP simply because IPX has never been normally run on that frame type. There's no significant technical advantage for IPX between Ethernet_II and Ethernet_SNAP, but Ethernet_II is by far the more common of the two, particularly for IPX. One thing's for certain: no matter which frame type you decide to use, SPECIFY IT in your configuration files. Do *NOT* let the LAN driver use the "default" frame type. The default can change from version to version of the LAN drivers, but you don't want any given node to change its frame type just because a driver was upgraded. To ensure that doesn't happen, tell the LAN driver explicitly which frame type to use, even if you think the frame type you've selected is the default. (This is actually general advice: when configuring *any* software, only allow the software to use default values when you really don't care what the value is. Since the wrong frame type would break communications, you really *do* care exactly which frame you're using, so specify it.) P.S. No, I didn't forget. The first minor technical advantage of Ethernet_II is that in it the IPX packet is aligned to the proper word boundary. The poor alignment of Ethernet_802.2 will cause a slight performance penalty in some cases, although I've seen nothing to indicate the performance penalty would ever be significant...or even measurable, for that matter. The second is that in Ethernet_II, the hex E-type 8137 is officially assigned to IPX by IEEE. The Ethernet_802.2 SAP which IPX uses (hex E0) is *not* officially assigned to IPX. E0 is in the range of SAPs which are reserved for local definition. This means that there's no official restriction against some other network protocol using a SAP of E0, although in practice it is extremely unlikely anyone would ever do such a thing. [Thanks to Don Provan for this info] Some added reading material about the subject from the Internet RFC archives (anonymous ftp to nic.ddn.mil or mirrors thereof): 1. RFC-1011, "Official Internet Protocols" by Reynolds and Postel. 2. RFC-1060, "Assigned Numbers" by Reynolds and Postel. 3. RFC-1042, "A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams over IEEE 802 Networks" by Reynolds and Postel. [Thx Joe D.] RFC-1011 Official Internet... superceded by RFC-1600 same name RFC-1060 Assigned numbers superceded by RFC-1700 same name [Thanks to Henrik Olsen for this additional info] A free booklet is available from Lantronic (1-800-422-7055) called "Ethernet Tutorial and Product Guide". [Thx L.C.H.] M. OBTAINING CNE QUALIFICATION M.1 What is a CNE A CNE (Certified Netware Engineer) is an individual who has passed the Novell tests to qualify as a CNE. Opinions differ as to exactly how useful a CNE qualification is, but it has to be said that more and more employers are looking for CNEs. Many companies offer training courses to help qualify as a CNE. M.2 How to get CNE qualification Novell have appointed companies as training centres, where you can also take the exams. Your local Novell office should be able to provide you with a list of training centres. M.3 Useful reading for CNE studies There is a two vol. set comprising "CNE Netware Training Guide", New Rider Press, ISBN 1-56205-305-1, $138 and "Novell's guide to Netware 3.12 networks" (Sybex) $35. Distributed by Bay Connection Co, USA (josepha@world.std.com, fax 617-965-8113) both in the USA and overseas. BCC bundles each set with free Netware Assessment Test and CNE-Quiz demo program to help test the current knowledge. [Thanks to J. Abramson for this info] Netware Training Guide: Networking Technologies 2ed., New Rider Press, ISBN 1-56205-309-4. Covers the certification tests for DOS, Microcomputer Technologies, Service and Support, as well as Networking Technologies. There are also more books to the Network Training Guide series: Netware 4 Update, and Netware 4 administration. [Thanks to Greg Coldwell for this info] M.4 CNE-related documents from Novell FAXBACK Service Novell has CNE-related documents obtainable via the Novell Education FAXBACK Service at 801-429-5363. The CNE testing process recently changed. The certification tracks are more specialized, and the ECNE is being replaced by the "Master" CNE. Relevant FaxBack documents are: 1443 CNE & Master CNE Programs: Participant's Guide (7 pages) 1444 CNE & Master CNE Programs: Q & A (5 pages) 1448 CNE Matrix 1471 New CNE Program Progress Chart 1472 Master CNE Progress Chart 1473 Continuing Ed. Requirment for Current CNE's [Thanks to Dave Ax for this info] N. CD-ROM MATERIAL N.1 How do I get to see a CD drive on my Netware v3.12 server? Only SCSI CD-ROMs can be mounted by NetWare [until recently, see N.5 below]. The documentation for CD-ROM support failed to tell you that you need to load an additional .DSK driver before loading CDROM.NLM. The NetWare installation program is equally inept in this regard; there are several such .DSK drivers on your SYSTEM_2 diskette, yet it does not copy any of them to your SYS:SYSTEM directory. For Adaptec ASPITRAN, the driver you want is ASPICD.DSK. For generic ASPI interfaces, you want CDNASPI.DSK. For other implementations, try out the .DSK drivers on SYSTEM_2, but you may need to contact the vendor of your SCSI host adapter to get the correct driver. Future Domain has a BBS at 714-253-0432, in the short term, eMail can be sent to Virendra Rode at virendra@nexus.chapman.edu [Thx to V.K.R.] N.2 100% CPU utilization when mounting a CD-ROM When mounting a CD-ROM on a Netware server, CPU utilization may go to 100% for a long time. This is a normal part of the behaviour of the original 3.12 CDROM.NLM, but has been at least partially cured in later releases. You should upgrade to the current release (NetWare 4.10 users, as of this writing, have the current release; all others need CDROM3.EXE). When you mount a disc for the first time, the server builds an index table on SYS: in a hidden directory, SYS:CDROM$$.ROM. This index holds all directory information for the CD-ROM and allows the server to do directory searches on the CD-ROM much faster than it would be able to if it had to physically access the disc each time as CD-ROM drives have seek times an order of magnitude worse than those for hard drives. Also, this index is read into memory when the CD-ROM is mounted, providing a further speed improvement. The process of building this index appears to be very CPU- intensive. The duration of this CPU hit varies depending on the power of your CPU and the complexity of the CD-ROM; it may run anywhere from a second or so to many (tens of) minutes. When this process is complete, the system has an index ready for the next time you mount the CD-ROM. By default, all subsequent mount requests for this CD-ROM will be fulfilled by reading the index from the hard drive into memory, making the process of re-mounting the CD-ROM fast and not nearly as CPU-intensive. [Thx S.M.D.] N.3.1 CD-ROM software products for NetWare SCSI Express from Microdesign International, WInterhaven Fl. [Thx F.R.] N.3.2 CD-ROM hardware products for NetWare Pioneer 604X "jukebox". Load 6 CD's at once, quad speed drive, less than $1,000 US. Saves money as fewer SCSI cards/CD-ROM servers are needed. Some performance trade-off when jukebox has to load a different CD-ROM. [Thx F.R.] N.4 CD-ROM resources via the WWW Dave Ro maintains two CD-ROM resources for the Network Professional Association (NPA). One resource is a list of Network Support Resources on CD-ROM, the other is a list of Hardware and Software Solutions for CD-ROM networking. These resources can be found at: http://bos_npa.silverplatter.com/cdref.htm http://bos_npa.silverplatter.com/cdrom.htm [Thx D.R.] N.5 Mounting an IDE CD-ROM on a NetWare server There is an updated version of the CDROM.NLM (and other related files) available that allows an IDE CD-ROM to be mounted on a 3.12 or 4.1 server. ftp://ftp.novell.com/pub/netwire/novlib/04/CDUP4.EXE [Thx J.H.] The patch is now CDUP4.EXE and can be downloaded from: http://support.novell.com/search/patlst.htm [Thx S.R.#2] N.6 Mapping CD-ROM drives Most Windows programs do not need search drives nor do they need specific drive mappings, so it is better to use UNC notation instead. For example, if your "cdsoft" executable was in SYS:APPS\CD, set the run line as \\servername\SYS\APPS\CD\CDSOFT.EXE, with a working directory of \\servername\cdvolume. In a multi-server environment, where you wish to attach to a server, map drives, launch programs, then undo it all, then look into WINFINITE, from Winfinite Software, 22K Worlds Fair Dr., Somerset, NJ 08873 908-805-1931. [Thx D.K.] O. NETWARE and VISUAL BASIC O.1 Obtaining files demonstrating Visual Basic with Netware If you are interested in seeing how Visual Basic can be used for Netware programming, obtain the following files from your nearest Novell FTP Mirror site. novlib\11\nivb.zip Netware Interface for Visual Basic novlib\11\nwtest.zip Netware Test for Visual Basic Also, there is a Freeware Interface for Visual Basic for Windows 3.X that will allow use of the Netware SDK for Netware 4.X. It will work with either the latest Volume released to current developers (Vol 3) or the SDK you can purchase directly from Novell. It comes with an extended Windows slist program that demonstrates how easily the functions can be used. In reality this is an extension (with some modifications) to the NIVB software released by Novell for the earlier version of the SDK that was 3.X specific. Currently Bindery, File Server Environment and Connection functions are supported for all versions of Netware using a Bindery. 4.X NDS support will be provided after the Bindery work has been completed. A Userlist and Whoami for Windows will be available by Aug 1, 1995, with source code. The NDS capabilities for NW 4.X are currently being alpha tested in house and will be available by late 1995. The Interface is located at: ftp://ftp.shu.edu/pub/nw41/nw41bas.exe You can also send E-mail to divito@Lanmail.shu.edu with a subject line of 'retrieve interface' to retrieve it via E-mail. [Thanks to Joseph DiVito for this info] O.2 Visual Basic and Netware AppNotes There are also two Novell AppNotes on the subject of using Netware with Visual Basic (although this is _NOT_ supported by Novell...): October 92 Interfacing Visual Basic for Windows and NetWare July 93 A NetWare Interface for Visual Basic The AppNotes can be obtained by contacting the Novell Research Order Desk, FAX: +1 303 294-0903, Voice 800 377-4136, +1 303 297-2725. Address as follows: Novell Research Order Desk 1601 Park Avenue West Denver, CO 80216-5199 AppNotes are $95/year ($135 outside US) O.3 Visual Basic and Netware Books Here are a few books which might help you out to figure the calls out: Windows Development on NetWare Systems, Lori Gauthier and Sue Whitehead 1994, Windcrest, Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17294-0850 (McGraw-Hill) $34.95 Comes with a disk. This book also tells you how to "upgrade" to the currently supported SDK calls. NetWare System Interface Technical Overview, Novell 1990,1989 (Addison-Wesley), $32.95 (describes Novell's C Network Compiler APIs) Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to the Windows API, Daniel Appleman Ziff-Davis Press, 5903 Christie Ave, Emeryville, CA 94608, $34.95 Comes with a disk. It should be mentioned that the APIs included with the NIVB are _not_ current, and for this purpose, you should get the Novell SDK kit. Also, Novell will not support NIVB, but you can sometimes get some help from CompuServe, or from others on the Internet. [Thanks to Tom Tregilgas for this info] O.4 Apiary's Developer Suite for NetWare - VB 4.0 Edition Apiary, Little Rock, Arkansas, will ship [it] by November 1, 1995. "The Suite takes full advantage of 32-bit technology featured in MS VB 4.0 to implement a complete VB SDK for Novell's 32 bit NetWare clients." "[It] provides all the tools needed to build high performance 32-bit NetWare client applications for both MS Windows NT and MS Windows 95 in VB 4.0. This includes not only drive mapping and printing services, but also full access to NetWare Directory Services." [Thanks to Gary Dowdy for this info] O.5 NetBasic & Visual NetBasic NetBasic is a scripting language designed for the NetWare environment, which allows the development of Basic language scripts that run on the server platform. NetBasic ships with the core OS, and is installed into the SYS:NETBASIC subdirectory, along with a suite of utility scripts and example programs illustrating the use of the language. Available from HiTecSoft Corp. is a Windows Integrated Development Environment (IDE) which further simplifies the script development process. Using the NetBasic IDE (referred to as Visual NetBasic), scripts can be developed using a drag and drop facility on any Windows or Windows 95 workstation. [Thanks to Richard Strong for this info] P. SELECTED ERROR MESSAGES -- WHAT THEY MEAN P.1 "Lan receive buffer limit reached" Your server is probably running out of memory or you need to raise the "maximum packet receive buffers" limit. Also, you may want to set you "minimum packet receive buffers" to a large enough number so that when you start the server up next time, it will start with a large packet buffer pool. This error normally indicates faulty cabling rather than anything else. Look at the LAN driver statistics to see which one has errors on it. P.2 "Primary Interrupt Controller Detected A Lost Hardware Interrupt" Your server may have a device, commonly a NIC, configured to use an IRQ above 8. Re-configure the device to use an IRQ less than 8. >>>New info on this: The above is wrong. The primary interrupt controller handles IRQs below 8; it's the _secondary_ one that handles IRQs 9 and up. Note that IRQ 2 on an AT or higher is, in real life, IRQ 9. Also, the vast majority of servers don't get these messages. A lost hardware interrupt means that something generated an interrupt, but by the time the system went to find out what it was, the system could no longer figure out which device generated the interrupt. If the system appears to be functioning normally, it's usually safe to ignore these, and there's a SET parameter which you can use to turn off the display (and logging - these things can really eat up your system error log) of these messages. [Thx S.M.D.] To disable the display of this message, type the following SET commands at the NetWare server console prompt (and/or add them to your Autoexec.NCF file): SET DISPLAY LOST INTERRUPT ALERTS = OFF SET DISPLAY SPURIOUS INTERRUPT ALERTS = OFF P.3 "Loader cannot find public symbol..." The NetWare Loader cannot find a needed NLM and/or cannot autoload it. Make sure all relevant NLMs are present and are the correct (usually newest) version. [Thx H.B.] P.4 Getting rid of *all* NetWare system messages on a client PC Execute CASTOFF ALL on any PC where you do not want to receive NetWare messages like "Volume SYS: out of disk space". [Thx R.C.] Another option is to use CASTAWAY from Infinite Technologies or MSG_20 from Gary Dobbins (dobbins@arizona.edu) together with TSRCOM. [Thanks to Soren K Lundsgaard for this info] P.5 Using the Message Timeout option of the VLM If you use VLMs you can set the Message Timeout paratemter in the DOS Requestor section of NET.CFG and the messages will stop displaying automatically after the time period expires. [Thx R.J.L.] Q. NOVELL AND WINDOWS 95 Q.1 Booting Windows 95 from NetWare on a disk-less workstation Joe D. and his team have succeeded in getting Windows 95 to boot-up on hard disk-less workstations connected to NetWare. A document summarizing their efforts is at: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/misc/win95boo.txt For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/misc/win95boo.txt [Thx Joe D.] Q.2 Upgrading to Windows 95 The following is excerpted from a recent post by Joe D.: Win95 is DIFFERENT. With few exceptions you will need to reinstall all Windows programs from scratch. One exception seems to be Quattro Pro for Windows, where it is finally self contained enough to be run with a single pointer ("shortcut" in Win95-speak). I *strongly* recommend printing and reading the Win95 Resource Kit. You may also glean hints from reading win95boo.txt (mentioned in Q.1) Without doing lots of homework it is foolish to convert a production server to use Win95. To run VLMs you need autoexec.bat, and to do decent memory management and other normal tasks then config.sys is used too. My people have created a Win95 production delivery system on a production NW 3.12 server, and we've doubled the number of application directories (one for Win 3.1, one for Win 4.0). Each is booted differently at this time. We can use VLMs provided we don't use Ethernet boot ROMs, but if those ROMs are used then we must fall back to NETX.EXE. The problem is in Win95. We use QEMM/386 for memory management, but some machines don't work properly unless DOS memory management is used; beware. Long name support is NOT present unless one uses Microsoft's NW client, and I have no desire to do that. Long name support will cost your server quite a bit of memory and performance, to cache directories and to pay the penalty of each directory cache block holding only half as many files as without the extra OS2 namespace. The load stream across the wire for Win95 runs to about 7.5MB here, so be prepared for additional network traffic. Printing works at both GUI and DOS box levels (to queue, via Capture in login script, respectively), but it is not yet gotcha-free. [Thx Joe D.] Update: ------- >What did [Joe D.] do to get Win95 working WELL on diskless workstations? >How much RAM on the workstations, any swap files on the server, what >applications are you running with it?? Clients are going to 32MB, up from 16MB, and of that 9MB is allocated as a C: RAM drive. I need 9MB to handle certain situations, but I need a RAM drive to service local storage requirements (read-only file server). Windows swap file is on C: as well so basically all of memory is available to Windows. Just about everything works under Win95. MS Office, WordPerfect for Windows and DOS (DOS 6.0b must run full screen), Borland C++ 4.5, Autocad, Quattro for Windows, MS C compilers, engineering programs, etc. Quattro Pro 5 for DOS does NOT, however, and does not run out of a DOS box on any version of Windows. I do not run MS Access data base, so I am free of those horrid locking problems. Clients are going to Pentium 90's, up from 486-33's. But the 486 machines do run Win95 ok, within their memory constraints. 16MB is just too small to run Excel and something else, limiting cut and paste operations. 32MB is about right for this year, until the Win95 versions of packages chew up more, as expected. All Ethernet. The traffic gets a bit hectic but the NE-2000 clone boards in clients work fine, and a pair of NE-3200's in the NW 3.12 server take the load and still manage to get plenty of sleep. Two runs of coax in this particular student lab. Printing is not quite perfect for Win95, yet. WordPerfect objects to the spelling of a print queue on the first go, but accepts it on the second try. Within Windows we print to NW queues, and CAPTURE still operates fine in the DOS boxen (Capture is run in the login script). VLM shells on machines, even though some test Pentium machines had sufficient trouble with their memory that we had to retreat to NETX and DOS mem management for them. We have discovered that a number of packages can be invoked ok from Win95 by creating the proper shortcuts. Some can be reinstalled to get .dlls etc. into Win95, and then the guts removed to save disk space; editing the Registry is needed to point to the directory used for regular Win 3.1 operation. Yes, we decided to run both Win 3.1 and Win95 for several months until customers voice a firm choice. In any case, not every package needs a Win95 installation but the vast majority will require significant work. Overall, Win95 seems to be about as stable and usable as Win 3.1. Finding anything on the green screen is nearly impossible until one clutters the desktop with shortcut icons, and then it's like Win 3.1 but with pretty pictures rather than square icons. Your tastes may vary. We decided to trash long name [LFN] support. That helps the file server a lot. LFN support works only with MS shell components at present, and in the end we found it to be nearly worthless. Yes, next year or two it will be the rage to create filenames miles long with spaces, but all programmers will have white hair from parsing such things. You can give all this a test drive at the end of the week. Be sure to thoroughly backup your system manager's DOS workstation because Win95 will eat its hard disk. Installing Win95 onto a file server for shared access requires installation to be executed on a workstation, as folks will discover. Be sure to turn off all peer to peer work over IPX. That item has a very nasty problem of making a Win95 station masquerade as a NW file server, and users seeing it can be trapped in a black hole. See my comments in the trade press on this snafu. [Thx Joe D.] Q.3 The NetWare Requestor for Windows 95 The Windows 95 requester for Netware is available for free download. See section S.43 for more up to date information. Q.4 Server install note The drill is to install Win95 on a workstation, and then use NETSETUP to install the shared image on a file server; the program runs only under Win95. I again refer folks to classical doc win95boo.txt for further hints; dir misc on netlab2.usu.edu. ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/misc/win95boo.txt Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/misc/win95boo.txt [Thx Joe D.] The diskette version DOES NOT come with a network installer, you will need the CD-ROM version for this. [Thanks to Fred Salerno for this info] Q.5 Long filename install workarounds MS Office 95 is being very difficult about being installed on a NetWare 3.12 server without long (OS2) filename support. Hint: try executing setup.exe /F where undoc'd /F means without long filename support. I'll get there eventually, I hope, but right now MS is winning the struggle. MS docs: "make sure the long file name feature of Windows 95 is turned on by setting the following entry in the Windows 95 system.ini file: [nwredir] SupportLFN=2" [Thx Joe D.] Q.6 Crippled MS NetWare Requestor stack "When you do talk with MS, discover the well known fact that their stack does not support Bootp. It has a crippled rendition of DHCP. Good luck, Joe D." [Thx Joe D.] Q.7 NetWare 4.x NDS and Windows 95 >I NEED MicroSoft's MAPLE product. I can not get my Windows 95 machine >to utilize NDS. I can't run NWADMIN, therefore, I'm dead in the water. The latest Client32 and IntranetWare Client can be downloaded from: http://support.novell.com/home/client/c3295/updates.htm Q.8 Windows 95 WWW links Microsoft's Win95 Page http://www.microsoft.com/windows/maps/taskbar.map?418,9 Randy's Win95 Resource Page http://www.cris.com/~randybrg/win95.html NetEx Win95 Software Archive! http://WWW.NetEx.NET:80/w95/windows95/ PCIX Win95 Info Page http://www.pcix.com/win95/win95home.html The Best Win95 Software http://www.pcix.com/win95/software.html Dylan Greene's Win95 Page! http://www.wam.umd.edu/~dylan/win95.html Dylan Greene's Windows95 Page! http://www.wam.umd.edu/~dylan/windows95.html A Ross Keele - Univ. of Sask http://duke.usask.ca/~keele/ Process' Win95 Page! http://www.process.com/Win95/ PC World's Here's How/Win95 http://www.pcworld.com/hereshow/windows95/ Pete Dyer's Win95 Page http://www.halcyon.com/pdyer/contents.htm IDirect/Stroud Win95 Page http://www.idirect.com/stroud/cwsa.html WWW VMS Win95 Page http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~neuroses/cwsapps.html WINHQ Free Win95 Files from MS http://www.windows95.com/apps/msfree.html Windows Rag http://www.eskimo.com/~scrufcat/wr.html Windows NT and Windows 95 ftp://papa.indstate.edu The One-Stop Windows 95 Site http://www.win95.com/ Windows 95 Resources http://www.winmag.com/people/melgan [Thx F.P.M.] Q.9 Telling Windows 95 to back-off! >It seems that for WIN95 to see the real mode NIC driver, the IRQ has to >be less than IRQ 9. Go into Win95, SYSTEM icon and tell it certain hardware resources are excluded from consideration. IRQs and Ports are on this list. IRQ 2/9 is grabbed by Win95 unless you slap its hands. Once that matter is understood by the green screen beast all is well. I happen to run Ethernet boards on IRQ 2/9, VLM redirector with boot roms, and do so happily after the above treatment. [Thx Joe D.] Q.10 Let's be clear...this is a _NOVELL_ list Let's be clear about what I[/NOVELL] can contribute to the discussion [of Win 95 server installs, etc.], and where you plus your Win95 Resource Kit plus Microsoft's Tech Support have to take over. I specifically dealt with a READ-ONLY file server, with clients having NO HARD DISK but with a RAM drive C:. In the examples in my doc the user directory was named \win95\user. The examples discuss what's particular to a user in that area, and you should pay attention to what's are MS "registry" files. You can create as many users as you wish, each with individual accounts located anywhere you wish, and they contain material similar to what I showed (but you can trim away great hunks after you have things settled down). May I repeat, learn what's in the registry files, because they hold the user and machine-specific information. I did not discuss Windows 3.x, nor NT 3.x since folks know how to handle the former and I don't want to spend more of my time on the latter (yes, I have both). I did not discuss having a local hard disk and storing Win95 on a server, though my notes basically cover that arrangement by implication. I did not discuss booting multiple operating systems, though personally I boot amongst DOS 6, Win95, OS/2 and NT on my desktop. I apologize for the notes being less than crystal clear and in strict order and free of omissions. I have updated material with clarifications and amplifications based on a second pass at installation, and I hope that the combination will be sufficient to launch folks along the twisty narrow safe pathway through this minefield. With the benefit of hindsight I can say that one needs to rethink arrangements when installing Win95. It is not an application invoked and exited at will, sigh. Many (most?) Windows applications will need to be reinstalled, but cleverness on your part can permit one final installation to service both Win 3 and 4 (as we do at my place). DOS applications will still run, but you will find creating "shortcuts" (icons with .PIF files) the convenient way of dealing with many. First thing: create a DOS icon as a shortcut to command "command.com." And, Plug&Play is your biggest enemy to installation, so keep at it time after time after time until you succeed. I have discarded Microsoft's networking material and in my lab we run ordinary VLMs. They work fine, thankyouverymuch, to the NW 3.12 file server. Novell has said at Brainshare[95] this spring, and the trade press has speculated, that NDS logins will be available real soon now (tm). Yesterday's press release said basically the same thing. There are good reasons to believe these statements. I put the discussion on this list only because of the NetWare server and client shell aspects. Beyond that the problems should go straight to Microsoft or one of the Windows NEWS groups/listservers, not to this listserver. [Thx Joe D.] Q.11 The best version of the Windows 95 Help File is... ftp://ftp.inmagic.com/pub0/k/kenbo/ or ftp://tecfa.unige.ch/pub/software/win95/updates/helpfile/ There's also a great Win95 Registry FAQ which can be downloaded from: http://www6.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/texis/swlib/hotfiles/info.html?fcode=000BD3 [Thx S.R.#2] Q.12 Integrating the Netware Client 4 DOS/Windows (VLMs) with Windows 95 Soon Novell will release a public beta of their Win95 32-bit client requestor, but until then here is what you can try... This [info] contains the instructions to integrate the NetWare Client for DOS\MS Windows (VLMs) v1.2x with Windows 95. This solution is temporary. Novell will release a 32-bit client for Windows 95 later this year (1995). When the 32-bit client is released, it will be the recommended client for Windows 95. This [info] provides step-by-step instructions to integrate the VLMs with Windows 95. It is assumed that you are running the 1.20 VLMs or later. The 1.20 VLMs are the VLMs that ship with NetWare 4.10. If you do not have the 1.20 VLMs, they can be downloaded from CompuServe. The updated VLMs are in VLMUP3.EXE in the NovFiles Forum. The entire client kit can be downloaded from NovFiles. There are 6 files that make up the client kit. The files are named VLMKTx.EXE (the x ranges from 1 to 6). This client kit already has the updates from VLMUP3.EXE applied. Q.12.1 Installation Overview Detailed step-by-step instructions are provided on the following pages. Here is a brief overview of the installation/configuration process for installing the VLMs on a new Windows 95 machine, and upgrading an existing Windows machine on which the VLMs were already installed. Overview of installing the VLMs on a new Windows 95 workstation. (Follow all steps in the detailed instructions beginning with step 1.) 1. Remove all network components from Network Control Panel in Windows 95 2. Reboot machine in MS DOS mode. 3. Install NetWare Client for DOS/MS Windows. 4. Reboot machine and add the Novell NetWare (Workstation Shell 4.0 and above [VLM] client in the Network Control Panel in Windows 95. Overview of the configuration steps for configuring Windows 95 to run with the VLMs after upgrading an existing Windows workstation that was configured for the VLMs. (Follow all steps in the detailed instructions beginning with step 8). 1. Perform the upgrade to Windows 95 with the VLM client loaded. 2. After completing the Windows 95 upgrade, open the Network Control Panel. If the client listed is Novell NetWare (Workstation Shell 4.0 and above [VLM]) you are finished. 3. If the above client is not installed, remove all network components and select Novell NetWare (Workstation Shell 4.0 and above [VLM]). Q.12.2 Some FAQs on integrating NetWare Client kit (VLMs) with Windows 95 Q. When will Novell's 32-bit client solution for Windows 95 be released? A. Novell's 32-bit client solution for Windows 95 will be called NetWare Client32 for Windows 95. It will be released 60-90 days after Windows 95 ships. Q. How do I login to a NetWare server from a Windows 95 workstation? A. When using the VLMs, if you want a login script to be executed you must login from a DOS prompt. To do this, execute login.exe from the autoexec.bat or winstart.bat after the VLMs have loaded. The NetWare Client32 for Windows 95 will ship with a Graphical login that will enable users to login from the Windows GUI interface. Q. Are Network Neighborhood and Windows Explorer functional with the VLMs? A. Yes. You can use Network Neighborhood and Windows Explorer to navigate through bindery servers. There is no NDS support within Network Neighborhood or Windows Explorer. The NetWare Client32 for Windows 95 will be fully integrated with Network Neighborhood and Windows Explorer. NWUser will provide you with a GUI interface into NDS servers. Q. Can I use NWUser on a Windows 95 workstation? A. Yes. You can use NWUser to map drives, capture ports, etc. However, the permanent connection features do not work with Windows 95. You should use login scripts to establish your workstations default network environment (mappings, captures). Q. How do I capture from Windows 95? A. You can execute capture.exe from a login script or in a DOS box. NWUSER can also be used to capture a port. Add Printer Wizard can be used to attach to bindery based print queues or NDS queues in the bindery context. Q.12.3 Detailed Step-by-Step Installation/Configuration Instructions 1. Launch Windows 95 and open My Computer 2. Open Control Panel. 3. Open Network. 4. If there are any network components in the Network Configuration property sheet, remove them. This is accomplished by highlighting a component and clicking Remove. If there are no network components installed, skip to step 5. Windows 95 will make the required modifications and display a dialog: Enter No. 5. The workstation now must be rebooted in MS-DOS mode so the VLM client install can be run.. Click on Start, Shut Down. Click Restart the computer in MS-DOS mode? and click Yes. 6. At the DOS prompt insert the NetWare Client for DOS/MS Windows diskette #1, change to A: and enter Install. Enter the required information in the NetWare Client Installation screen. 7. When the NetWare Client for DOS/MS Windows installation is complete, reboot the machine. The following series of error messages may be displayed when Windows 95 loads. Cannot find a device file that may be needed to run Windows or a Windows application. The Windows registry or system.ini file refers to this device file, but the device file no longer exists. If you deleted this file on purpose try uninstalling the associated application using its uninstall or setup program. If you still want to use the application associated with this device file try reinstalling that application to replace the missing file. C:\windows\system\vmm32\vnetbios.vxd. Press a key to continue. If these errors occur, press any key to continue. The next step is to configure Windows 95 to run with the VLMs. Once Windows 95 is configured to run with the VLMs, the errors will no longer occur. 8. Once Windows 95 has loaded, open My Computer, Control Panel, Network once again. 9. The Network Control Panel should not have any network components installed. If there are network components installed, remove them. 10. Click Add 11. Click Client 12. Click on Novell. You will see two options under Network Clients. 13. Click Novell NetWare (Workstation Shell 4.0 and above [VLM]), then click OK. 14. Click on the Identification tab. You must type in names for your computer and the workgroup it will appear in. You must also type in a short description of your computer. 15. Click OK. While Windows 95 is being configured you may receive dialog boxes asking for you to insert a disk. If you are displayed a screen such as this click OK. These files were installed when you installed the NetWare client for DOS/MS Windows. If the dialog states "The file filename' on Novell Netware 4.x Windows driver disk could not be found.", enter the path c:\windows\system directory in the "Copy files from:" box and click OK. If the dialog states "The file filename' on Novell Netware DOS driver disk could not be found.", enter the path c:\nwclient in the "Copy files from:" box and click OK. A dialog will be displayed when the configuration process is complete: Click No. There is one more step that needs to be performed. 16. Open a DOS box, and modify the c:\nwclient\startnet.bat or autoexec.bat to include the following commands: F:login (servername\username is optional) When you reboot the workstation you will be prompted to login while Windows 95 is initializing. In some cases, Windows 95 will insert lines in the autoexec.bat to load the Novell ODI drivers even though the client is already being loaded from another batch file such as the startnet.bat. Check your autoexec.bat and verify that the ODI drivers are not being loaded twice. 17. Reboot the machine. Click Start, Shut Down. Then click Restart the computer and click Yes. 18. The machine will reboot. You will be prompted to login from a DOS/text screen while Windows 95 is initializing. Also, check out: http://netwire.novell.com/ServSupp/client/win95/ Q.13 Windows 95 + SAPs .NE. NetWare file server !!! Do not let Microsoft products advertize themselves via IPX SAPs because in the case of print/file sharing they appear to be real NetWare file servers (but are not). At my place it is a formal crime against the network to do so, and we retaliate formally. There's nothing behind that facade of "I'm a server, come to my place", and further it says it's one hop closer to the wire than anyone else. Thus clients starting up get that Win95 monster and the consequent black hole. If they must share, then use NetBEUI (not routable) or RFC-NetBIOS (routable). [Thx Joe D.] Q.14 Is there any way to check the version of Client32 for Win95? Type MODULES at the DOS prompt and see what version of CLIENT32.NLM is loaded. [Thanks Peter Burtt] R. TEXT EDITORS -- "If a tree falls in a forest..." In every walk of life, there is always a question that really has no one right answer. In the case of text editors the odds of a flame war increase with the urgency of the user's request to the list for "the best editor for job xxx". Here then are the elite of text editors...IMHO of course. R.0 Word 5/DOS from Microsoft W5/DOS has been around a while, 1989 or so, but it is still remarkable: first with "select then act" metaphor, native RTF support, mouse welcome interface, style sheets & "templates" (glossary fn), it also has a 100,000 word spell checker, 220,000 word thesaurus, column-based operations, some math ability, ability to link documents, spreadsheets & graphics, and supports postscript printing without kludges. It also has a pretty good macro language, featuring intuitive command names, ability to format macro source code or save to plain text, as well as macro step mode. Finally, in addition to graphic preview and great online help/tutorial, W5/DOS can handle up to 8 documents at once, each up to 8 MB in size, something that WinWord x.x only dreams of (yet promises). Only the 622k .EXE is essential, with a 720k floppy setup quite useable. Probably impossible to get ahold of (like Win 3.x now)...chief architect: Charles Simonyi (for President). R.1 QEdit from SemWare QEdit is well known to most as fast and powerful yet small (EXE under 60k), with the biggest limitation being no access to virtual memory. Thus documents can be no larger than about 600k. SemWare Corporation, Suite C3A, 4343 Shallowford Road, Marietta, GA 300062-5022, U.S.A, Voice: 800-467-3692 or 404-641-9002 9 am to 5 pm EST, FAX: (404) 640-6213, BBS: (404) 641-8968, sales@semware.atl.ga.us, tech.support@semware.atl.ga.us, CIS: 75300,2710 R.1.1 The Semware Editor from SemWare The Semware Editor (TSE) Professional v2.5 is the latest from SemWare Corporation, Suite C3A, 4343 Shallowford Road, Marietta, GA 300062-5022, U.S.A. Voice: 800-467-3692 or 404-641-9002 9 am to 5 pm EST, FAX: 404-640-6213, BBS: 404-641-8968, sales@semware.atl.ga.us, tech.support@semware.atl.ga.us, CIS: 75300,2710 [Thanks to Joop van Buuren for this info] R.2 Multi-Edit from American Cybernetics Possibly the best DOS-based multi-file editor with [if memory serves,] up to 100 files open at once, undo up to 64k operations with full control, load multiple files with wildcard from DOS prompt. Multi-Edit is very extensible (much of it is written in its c-like language that can be edited then recompiled) with numerous add-ons available, with one in particular geared to c++ programming (Evolve?). American Cybernetics, #112-1830 W. University Drive, Tempe, AZ 85281, 602-968-1945, Fax: 602-966-1654, sales@amcyber.com. R.3 Brief from Borland The grand-daddy of professional editors, I was scared away the one time I ran it. Many swear by it. Borland, 408-461-9000 or 800-841-8180 for a directory of phone numbers, ftp.borland.com. R.4 Edlin from Microsoft Press the down arrow twice. R.5 Copy con filename from Microsoft GoTo R.4 for an example of "recursion" R.6 DOS 5.x/6.x (QBasic) Edit from Microsoft Type EDIT /? to learn more! R.7 Epsilon from Lugaru Software This EMACS clone supports 100+ files, virtual memory (ems, xms and disk), vertical and horizontal screen splitting, 132*50 screens (& whatever your video card supports), regular-expression search and replace, undo and more. Works on DOS, OS/2 and Unix. [Thx J.P.] R.8 AAEMACS with Gnu source code AAEMACS comes with Gnu C++ source, can define macros and supports the mouse. It has its own HELP system and its help files (HELP and HELP.BIG) can be printed directly. It uses "virtual store" and fits uncompressed on one 3.5 inch floppy. Author: A.APPLEYARD@fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk ftp://ftp.coast.net/SimTel/msdos/editor/aaema95a.zip [Thx A. Appleyard] R.9 G (freeware) G is a color text editor for DOS and UNIX supports macros (based on ICL), regular expressions (from VI), WordStar navigation keys and the arithmetic routines with 'C' syntax. The macro language has loops, conditionals and arithmetic. G programs or individual commands may be run from the command line, from a file, or interactively from a "home" area at the top of the screen. The editor language uses a "conceptually simple two-file transcription copy/edit paradigm which is transparent to the casual screen editor user". Designed to be as efficient as possible, highly portable and supporting manipulation of large files, G has a very fast startup time and needs comparatively little memory. Available for most flavours of UNIX and MSDOS for the 386 or later. FreeWare. Author: jah@ilena.demon.co.uk ftp://ftp.coast.net/SimTel/msdos/editor/g471exe.zip ftp://ftp.coast.net/SimTel/msdos/editor/g471src.zip [Thx Jeremy Hall] R.50 Windows Editors R.51 WinEdit from Wilson WindowWare Windows hosted and shareware, from Wilson WindowWare, try it at: http://www.windowware.com/ or ftp://ftp.windowware.com/wwwftp/wilson R.52 MegaEdit from WinNET Communications, Inc. Also Windows hosted and shareware, from WinNET Communcations, Inc, (formerly Computer Witchcraft, Inc.) Box 4189, Louisville, KY 40204 (502) 589-6800, Fax: (502) 589-7300, CIS: 76130,1463, megaedit@win.net R.53 PFE (freeware) PFE is a multi-file high capacity MDI editor oriented towards use not only by programmers, but for general application as well. No limit on file size other than system resources. It can handle UNIX and DOS formats automatically, and compilers and programs can be run and the output captured. Freeware. Author: A.Phillips@lancaster.ac.uk http://www.lancs.ac.uk/people/cpaap/pfe/ [Thx Alan Phillips] R.54 TextPad from Helios Software Solutions TextPad 1.30: Ziff-Davis 1995 Award winner. An editor for 16 & 32-bit Windows. It's fast & edits huge files; provides 2 views/file; word wrap; 32 editing commands; full undo/redo; REAL drag & drop; BLOCK select; hex viewer; tool & status bars; GREP & file comparison; in-context help & popup menus; DOS output window; etc. Downside? uses 16% FSResources. Author: Helios Software Solutions [The best Windows editor that I have tried to date.] R.55 Zeus for Windows (shareware) Zeus for Windows Editor. For those who have been looking for a Brief editor for Windows, the search is over. Features include, MDI file support, status and toolbar, syntax colorizing, background compiler, automatic backup, inline error listing and correction, unlimited undo/redo, search, replace, bookmarks, mouse and keyboard marking (column, block and stream modes), quick help keyword searching (search's ANY number of WinHelp files), programmable keyboard expansion, keyboard macros, external tool support, smart indenting, File Manager drag and drop support, and of course supports the Brief keyboard keystrokes mapping. ShareWare. Author: jussi@sydney.dialix.oz.au Current version, via Simtel (& mirrors): ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/win3/editor/zeusv215.zip Zeus Home site: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jussi [Thx Jussi Jumppanen] R.99 VEdit, KEdit, HEdit, PE, & others After I recover from getting inundated with comments about other MUCH BETTER editors, I will consider adding their voices to the multitude. S. FURTHER INFORMATION (files available by FTP or WWW, see Section A.2) With any of these files (or the FAQ for that matter) please add or edit it and then return it so others can benefit. S.84 W95&SAPs.TXT - Info on Windows '95's SAP "feature" Windows 95 has the ability to advertize itself with IPX SAP (service advertizing protocol) packets on the wire when file/printer services are shared peer to peer. Such SAPs say the machine is offering NetWare file services, and it shows up in SLIST etc. To clarify what Windows 95 does I asked a member of the development team at Microsoft to comment upon the subject, and he has kindly done so in W95&SAPs.DOC. I suggest you read it and think about the matter as it pertains to your site. This file is informational, not to argue a position. Aaron has given permission to reproduce the document intact. File size: 16 KBytes [Thx Joe D. & Aaron Ogus] S.85 WIN95BOO.TXT - Info on booting Windows '95 diskless from NW server "...a summary of the steps taken at Utah State University to create a boot floppy to run Win95 from a read-only NetWare file server. The clients have no hard disks, only a nice RAM drive C in this case. The version of Windows 95 is build 950 R6." WIN95BOO.DOC was my copy of it...now superceded by W95INSps.ZIP at: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/misc/w95insps.zip For Netscapers: ftp://netlab2.usu.edu/sys/anonftp/misc/w95insps.zip File size: 562 KBytes [Thx Joe D., P.R.#2, Joe D., Eddie Priest] ---- End of Frequently Asked Questions for NOVELL@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU ----