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Summary<br />

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Novell NDS is one compelling reason shops haven’t totally abandoned the Novell network operating<br />

system in favor of NT. A Novell server is nothing more than a fancy 32-bit DOS program, but its leanand-mean<br />

paradigm translates into you getting more oomph out of your hardware investment. The server<br />

program acts as a broker between the various NLMs that make the system work; therefore, the server<br />

itself is basically a conglomerate of NLMs. The modularity of the system also means that one<br />

malfunctioning NLM can ruin your whole day, but take heart—tools exist to manage what can seem to<br />

be a daunting NLM tracking and upgrading task.<br />

The Monitor can help you with tough troubleshooting jobs, because it keeps track of every resource<br />

available to the server. In addition to keeping track of server connections, it keeps track of memory and<br />

CPU resources, as well as what each NLM process utilizes.<br />

IPX/SPX is a reasonably easy protocol to configure, but most shops need TCP/IP. Both are configurable<br />

through INETCFG.NLM. TCP/IP applications can be configured through UNICON, and many statistics<br />

and internal tables can be viewed through the TCPCON. What’s more, Novell now includes standard<br />

tools such as PING and IPTRACE (traceroute) in its TCP/IP distribution.<br />

<strong>Workshop</strong><br />

Q&A<br />

Q Why doesn’t Novell just get rid of the concept of ABENDs?<br />

A Every operating system, whether it’s UNIX (kernel panics) or NT (the Blue Screen of Death), has<br />

unrecoverable errors. It’s just the nature of the beast. Nobody wants an operating system to keep running<br />

after the foundation has been undermined. The thought is: it’s much better to reboot than to have to<br />

restore all the lost data due to the server not showing the good judgement to stop playing with the data.<br />

You can type the following command on your Novell server to make it reboot automatically after<br />

software ABENDs, which at least automates the recovery process most times (set it to 2 if you want it to<br />

reboot after hardware-related ABENDs, as well):<br />

SET AUTO RESTART AFTER ABEND=1

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