Sep
5
2008
A customer of my complained that after migrating from Novell Netware 6.5 to OES2 Linux, the users complained that sometimes the loose their connection with a specific server.
After a trace (how to do show look here) I saw that if a users doesn’t uses a server for more than a hour his connection gets broken. If a users wants to for example get a file list of the specific server the get a connection broken error. If the click OK and the drive again the file list appears. The trace shows that after the connection broken error the Novell Client does a reset of the TCP connection and does a automatic user authentication to the server.
If you wait more than 2 hours the server sends a Keep-Alive packet to the workstation to see if the workstation is still available.
But why does the connection gets broken after a hour?? This was due a firewall that was between the workstation and server. This firewall (Cisco ASA) resets a TCP connection that isn’t used over a hour. They told me this is default.
The solution was to enable watchdog for OES2. Watchdog is a method to see if a workstation is still available. If you go to Remote Manager | Manage NCP Services | Manage Server you can define the option FIRST_WATCHDOG_PACKET. Default this option is 0, the value you define here is the time in minutes that the servers sends his first WATCHDOG packet to the workstation. After that the server will send every minute a WATCHDOG packet to the workstation to see if it’s still available.
I set mine to 50 minutes.
Here you can find information on setting for OES.
Sep
5
2008
Earlier I blogged that a Vmware tools upgrade modified the /etc/fstab file and removed manually added entries.
Vmware release a patch today for this problem. This patch is for ESX 3.5i. For ESX 3.5 will be released later today.
Thanks to Ducan from Yellow Bricks.
Sep
5
2008
After some comment of a few people (Yeah you Toine), I changed the scheme of my blog so it’s better readable.
At the moment I’m waiting for a better header image who will be create by Ronald. Many thanks to him, who is also creating a new website for me. When that is finshed, I’ll post it here of course!
Sep
4
2008
Novell released public beta’s for Groupwise 8 and OES2 SP1.
I’m running Groupwise 8 (Bonsai) for quit a while now (If I remeber right Januari 2008) so I will be upgrading my server toninght!
I also tried to download OES2 SP1 but I cannot find it on the website of Novell. Hope the publish it soon!
Here you can find the Public Beta
Sep
4
2008
The Council on Educational Affairs in Holland Advised the Goverment the use of Open Source Software!
I the press release the council say’s that the IT infrastructure of Dutch education made good progress and that it is now the time for the use of open source software.
This is great for us OpenSource guy’s!! And I think it is a good impulse for the Dutch education.
Here is the whole press release, Sorry it is in Dutch….
