Re: Running Netware 4.11 on a modern server.
- From: stephen@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Stephen M. Dunn)
- Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 02:13:47 GMT
In article <dijenj$8b3$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> David Gersic <usenet_spam_trap@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
$On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 14:29 +0100 (BST), Stuart Robinson <Stuartr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
$> Assuming that there are drivers available for the disk controller and
$> network card
$
$These will, of course, be the tricky part.
Indeed. And possibly for other hardware; I was recently asked to
add a nice new high-capacity tape drive to a server running 4.11, and
couldn't do it. The tape drive manufacturer doesn't provide drivers;
they expect it to work with NetWare's built-in generic tape driver or
with a backup app's specialized tape driver. Even the latest
Novell tape driver for 4.11 has no clue what an LTO tape drive is
and won't load. The old tape backup software (since current versions
don't support as far back as 4.11) also doesn't have any clue what an
LTO drive is and won't load.
I'm rather disappointed, actually; I have worked with a Unix
flavour for many years which, in addition to specific drivers for
specific types of tape drives, also has a generic SCSI tape driver
which will successfully work with almost any SCSI tape drive (albeit
with limited features; no partitioning, for instance, or fast seeks,
but reading and writing data work perfectly well, and after all,
reading and writing are the primary requirements for a tape backup
system). So I know it's possible to write a generic SCSI tape driver
which could be used as a last resort, but apparently neither Novell
nor Veritas knows how to do this.
Anyway, I just wanted to point out that there while the disk/SCSI
and NIC drivers are the obvious ones, it's still possible to run into
other compatibility problems using modern hardware with antique
NetWare versions. If you can find drivers for NetWare 5, they'll
often work on 4.11 as long as you've updated all the other
NWPA and similar components (which can sometimes be a bit of a
chicken-and-egg problem; you need to install the updates before
you can access the hard drive or network, but you may need to
be able to access the hard drive or network in order to install
the updates).
$> there any reason why Netware 4.11 would not run on a
$> server with a modern processor ?
$
$No, it should work fine on almost any CPU that is 386/486/Pentium
$compatible.
The above client is running it on a Compaq ProLiant ML330
PIII/933 with a 400- or 500-series RAID array. That's quite a
few years more recent than NetWare 4.11 but it works just fine;
in fact, that server tends to stay up for >200 days at a time
before it needs to be rebooted (most recently to add more RAM,
and I think the time before that was due to it needing to be
unplugged to do some work in the server room).
--
Stephen M. Dunn <stephen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>>----------------> http://www.stevedunn.ca/ <----------------<<<
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Say hi to my cat -- http://www.stevedunn.ca/photos/toby/
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- References:
- Running Netware 4.11 on a modern server.
- From: Stuart Robinson
- Re: Running Netware 4.11 on a modern server.
- From: David Gersic
- Running Netware 4.11 on a modern server.
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