>
>There were several; i think the fixes started working in the APril/may timeframe.


hmmm.. the latest one I could find on the novell site was the same date as the version I've already got...

>
>>they don't have one. They want me to do it for them.
>>
>
>Unless you really know NetWare a whole lot better than I do, I would avoid it like the plague - I'm semi-competent, having been a CNE years ago,
>but contract out our in-hosue support for Novell.

small company like this one doesn't want to do that if they can avoid it. I have called in a local company on occasion. Fortunately with Novell, generally (with the possible exception of this problem) once you've got it running, it tends to keep running...

>>>and restricting some of the Client32 options,
>>
>>this I can manage if you'd be kind enough to list the guilty options...
>>
>Turn off write caching, disable packet burst, a couple of others. Go look in the Novell forum here on UT - there were discussions several months ago about it.
>
>>>or switching to the MS Client,
>>
>>I'll try to avoid that because I really could do without 12 total reinstallations of Win 98
>>
>
>Better that than one totally useless LAN, but it's your site, not mine.
>
>>>and mnay require changes to be made at the server end.
>>
>>ferinstance?
>
>Turn off compression, shorten up some of the delayed write options to force the cache to be clean more often, change some timeouts. I don't do NW 4.
>
>>>FWIW, at my own company, where we have a mixed NetWare/NT Server environment, we decided to remain with NetWare 3.20 rather than going to NetWare 4/5 in-house; we've enjoyed the same stable environment we had with our previous NetWare 3.12 environments. We're small though - only two NetWare servers, and there was no overwhelming need for NDS.
>>
>>is 3.20 Y2K compliant? That was the main reason this user stepped up from 3.12...
>>
>
>Yep, and the price was -free- as long as you already had a current 3.12 and you didn't need more CALs. 3.20 is lots of bug fixes, including Y2K compliance, over 3.12
>
>The bad news - to go back to it now, you'd have to do a server reinstall...
>
>>
>>>This is a small-scale environment, so the need for NDS is not overwhelming. I'd look at server configuration as well; you may be running into problems with the address space and the SCSI HA with 512MB of RAM - cutting back to 256MB or 384MB might well alleviate some problems related to the NetWare SCSI drivers.
>>>
>>
>>how could I test for such problems. Must confess that apart from this particular issue, the network has been running 'sweet as a nut' and doesn't give any other obvious signs of trouble...
>>
>
>Start by reading the motherboard, HA and SCSI driver docs. The chipset/HA interaction, and the ability for the HA to address memory above the 64MB mark is the key.
>
>>>A detailed knowledge of the hardware would be needed to determine if this were the problem, but they've made some very poor choices as far as their hardware investments from my POV; for example, a single SCSI drive and 512MB of RAM seems to be a particularly poor decision. The use of RAID or at least duplexing, with less system RAM, might well give significantly better throughput on the disk system, especially on large block accesses, and would provide much better fault tolerance (there is none now as you've described it; the failure of the HA or disk takes out the entire system.)
>>>
>>
>>I shall pass this advice on. But is it possible to switch from what they have now to a raid or duplex system without major hassle and expense?
>>
>
>Well, the SCSI HA can support at least 7 devices, so mirroring would be a matter of an identical drive; duplexing a duplicate drive and HA. RAID is either software striping or a hardware change; we use the Adaptec 3895 chipset on a SuperMicro P6DLS motherboard with the Adaptec ARO1130SA RAIDPort adapter, which give us a dedicated hardware cache, RAID management and dual channels, for less than the Adaptec A133 RAID controller plus an equivalent SM or Asus dual-processor motherboard without onboard SCSI. We have the advantage here of someone who's a relatively extreme hardware geek who worked as a sysop for a number of years on Adaptec's CIS forum (me), so I'm pretty certain to get that much of the game right once in a while. WI is fault-tolerance fanatical as a result - everything is duplexed or runs RAID 5 on our servers, we use SCSI server-based DAT backup, and every machine is on a UPS that's at least 380VA. We've lost less than 40 hours of uptime due to server failure in just
>under 10 years of in-house operation, and we have some of the flakiest power in the state of CT...