Workshop

Again, make sure you are running the latest Novell patches—many odd NDS problems have been fixed.
Your “Friend,” the ABEND
If you’ve run Novell products for any length of time, you know how aggravating it can be to get an
ABEND. An ABEND, short for abnormal end, is when the server can’t handle a situation that has arisen
and must terminate its operation because data might get corrupted otherwise. It’s a difficult call—would
you rather continue working and risk data corruption, or would you rather be down?
What causes an ABEND? In a nutshell, hardware problems and software problems cause ABENDs. It’s
understandable that a bad CPU or bad memory could take down the entire server—after all, without good
memory or a working CPU, it’s sort of hard to run programs. But why should one program (such as your
Web server program, for example) cause the entire server to go down? Fortunately, the latest Novell
server software has started to make distinctions as to what constitutes a major problem versus a minor
one.
Novell called the 4.11 version of its NetWare operating system IntraNetWare to emphasize the intranet
services included with the product. The 5.0 version has dropped the Intra and is, once again, NetWare.
Don’t ask me, man, I didn’t do it!
This is actually one of the really good reasons to upgrade from an earlier version of NetWare to the
current versions, IntraNetWare 4.11 or NetWare 5.0.
Novell now classifies applications in two different ways:
• Applications that use the same memory and so on that the server program uses (dangerous, but
fast).
• Applications that use a special protected mode where the amount of damage they can do to the
server itself if they misbehave is minimized (slower, but safer). (Think of this as the rock climber
who climbs bare-handed—and quickly—versus the rock climber using pitons, who is slower but
safer.)
If you’re still on a lower level of NetWare, or even if you’ve upgraded to IntraNetWare, you might have
hardware-related ABENDs, or ABENDs due to software that isn’t running in a protected domain. Refer to
Novell TID (Technical Information Document) #2917538 or just do a search on ABEND Troubleshoot at
the Knowledge Base (http://support.novell.com). It’s very well worth your time.