Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 12:40:12 -0600 (MDT)
From: Roger Ivie <IVIE AT cc DOT usu DOT edu>
Subject: [opendos] Personal Netware
To: OPENDOS AT MAIL DOT TACOMA DOT NET
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I suppose this stuff probably belongs in OpenDOS-Support, but I've not seen
any messages from that list yet and I'm not adventurous enough to send the
first one...

I've been playing some more with Personal Netware on my OpenDOS box. Here's
where I'm at so far:

- I have finally gotten Personal Netware to load and still be able to talk to
  my Netware 4.02 server. I still get the note about 802.3 checksums, but
  I've been ignoring it.

  As is usual with the problems I've had with Netware (and networking in 
  general when DOS and/or Windows is involved), I'm not entirely certain what
  I've done to make it work. The differences between my NET.CFG which works
  and the one generated by SETUP (which doesn't) are:

  - My NET.CFG has a "Link Support" section which specifies "Buffers 1 1600".
    This is in there because it's needed for ODIPKT, which I will be playing
    with shortly, so I don't think this is it.

  - My NET.CFG omits the "WORKGROUP NET" line. I don't know what it's doing,
    but it seems kind of important (I suspect it's telling Personal Netware
    which Netware network number to use; this may only be critical if you
    have multiple workgroups) yet I'm running without it.

  - My NET.CFG omits "VLM = AUTO.VLM" and "VLM = NMR.VLM". I suspect the
    NMR VLM is remote network management. I don't know what AUTO does.

- I added PNW to the "NETWARE PROTOCOL" line of the DOS/Windows box sitting
  next to the OpenDOS box. Using the Windows tools, I can now log into the
  OpenDOS box's workgroup and map its hard disk. I.e., my Windows box can use
  the Personal Netware resources offered by the OpenDOS box.

  For the faint of heart, my Windows box is running Microsoft's TCP/IP stack
  on top of the Novell stuff, so I can currently mount drives from Netware,
  Personal Netware, Lan Mangler, and Samba on my Windows box.

- I can see no way to get to the OpenDOS box's resources from NT or Win95.
  Those guys just don't seem to have the option of speaking to Personal
  Netware. I've not dug through Novell's web pages yet, though.

- TaskMgr cannot kill _any_ DOS sessions. This means my only way to shut the
  machine down is The Big Red Switch (tm).

BTW, I'm doing all this on a 16MHz 386SX with 4MB of RAM. The machine is being
a Personal Netware server, a Netware 4.02 client, running a DOS command line
out a serial port to a terminal, and running a second DOS command line on the
console. About TaskMgr reports that I have 604KB remaning space. MEM says I
can run a 567K executable in each of my DOS command lines.

Roger Ivie
ivie AT cc DOT usu DOT edu