News from PANUG - February 21, 2001 http://www.panug.org info@panug.org WORDS NOT IN THE DICTIONARY Hipatitis: Terminal coolness. LINUX VERSUS INNOVATION Several people have responded to the article where a Microsoft executive claims that Linux stifles innovation and wants our government to do something about it. You can read these comments at the following web site. http://www.panug.org/articles/innovation.htm DREW MAJOR WEBCAST by Robert Young Novell recently spun-off their Internet Caching System-based products into a company called Volera. On Thursday, Feb 22 at 11:00 pm Pacific Time (1900 GMT), Drew Major (the chief architect of NetWare) will speak about Volera in a webcast that you can tune in to at: http://www.novell.com/community/nui/videos/index.html Drew is Volera's Chief Technology Officer and has been recognized by leading industry publications as one of the most influential people in the networking and computer industry. Major received his Bachelor of Science degree from Brigham Young University, graduating with high honors in mathematics and computer science. For more information on Volera, visit their web site at www.volera.com NDS ADVANCED TOOLS AND DIAGNOSTICS by Bruce Yatvin, Master CNI, Master CNE, CTT Yatvin Computer Consultants http://ycc.panug.org/ I just wanted to clarify and emphasize a few of things from the NDS Advanced tools and Diagnostics talk last week. I mentioned that the number one troubleshooting tool is to wait. In the last example I did, we fixed the time problem and removed a server that was gone from the tree. However, we did not make sure that there was a master for each replica ring. I did fix only one replica ring. The reason was two fold. You don't want to create new problems by doing too many actions at once and we had time restrictions. So the lack of time and the lack of completion of repairs explains why the obituaries were still present at that point. Also it is possible to force actions to occur faster but it is not a requirement even when doing repairs. You will have to wait longer perhaps for all errors to go away and I will normally force the selected operations that need to be done to clean up the errors I am working on. The DSRepair -rc flag is a server specific database dump to the file DSREPAIR.DIB in SYS:\SYSTEM on the server. If you have 5 servers that you want to backup the database for, you need to run it on all of these servers. Then Novell Technical support can use the dump files to restore each individual server's directory database information to the server if things get broken badly. I did want to repeat what I said at the end of the meeting, that in normal troubleshooting you use the error messages and symptoms to search the Knowledgebase, Logicsource, Support connection CD and NDS Manager help files for possible solutions. Then you decide which ones seem to apply and would be most likely to resolve the problem. Because of time restraints I did not do the research that is a critical part of the normal process. Also when you are done, document what you did and if needed assess changes to policy that might prevent the same problem from occurring again. As for error messages, one important place to look is the DStrace screen. That was why you might need to do a TTF=on and then shut it off and look at the log file so that you don't miss messages that scrolled off the screen. Leaving TTF on or not resetting it with a *R, can fill the file with too much information to easily read. Plus the trace file will fill the SYS: volume if you don't shut it off! Lastly, someone commented on my mentioning a rate for CDE work. CDE work can be higher than more routine support, however I was quoting an excessive number as a joke and not a serious hourly rate for most environments.