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If youre the one who installed your server, youre probably already familiar with the INETCFG NLM, which I call the Swiss Army Knife of Novell networking. This NLM, similar to the Windows Network Control Panel, loads network drivers and binds and configures protocols to them. You can use it to quickly glance at the way things are configured.
Alternatively, you can simply type CONFIG at the console prompt (not LOAD CONFIG; thats the configuration file generator). INETCFG tells you the way things should be, whereas CONFIG shows you the way things are (see Figure 13.9).
Figure 13.9 The CONFIG output of a server that has one network card and one network protocol (IPX/SPX).
If CONFIG doesnt match up with INETCFG, you might have a problem. You can sometimes resolve this by telling the server to enact a networking do over. Simply type the following:
REINITIALIZE SYSTEM
Scary as this command seems, all it does is reload network card drivers, if necessary, and bind protocols to those cards. Its really fastso fast that Ive run it on a test server, and my session didnt get dumped. However, I sure wouldnt try it on a live production server.
Ive already talked a little bit about how automatic IPX/SPX configuration is. Older versions of NetWare did not have automatic server configuration; they left it up to the administrator. Newer versions will scan the network and attempt to set things up right. Lets take a look at the way things should be on your servers IPX/SPX configuration anyway, because if theyre not right, youre in for trouble.
Each IPX/SPX segment needs a network number. This is not a big deal; you can select pretty much any hexadecimal number. The only caveat is that each IPX segment has be unique. The hard-and-fast rule is this: If the segments are connected via a switch, they should have the same network number because the segments are basically the same network. If, on the other hand, network segments are connected via router, they must have unique numbers. If the IPX network number for each network segment is not unique, you can run into problems, such as the inability for the servers and workstations on the segments to see each other.
NetWare is just full of unique prima donnas; theres another number, particular to each server, called the servers internal IPX network number. This number must also be unique, and it can be really useful in tracking down problems (as you saw in No Need to Fear; Monitor Man Is Here! when I tracked down the extra connections to the server itself). This number is hexadecimal; if its the same as another servers number, then it, too, can cause big problems (particularly if a server is acting as a router). In that case, duplicate internal IPX numbers will cause routing to stop working.
If you dont know what a particular servers internal IPX network number is, or what the network number is on the attached networks, just type CONFIG (just like with the spaghetti sauce, its in there).
Each IntraNetWare or NetWare server with more than one network card in it automatically acts as a router. Without giving away too much from Hour 14, Router and Switch Basics, any router, by definition, needs more than one network card because it connects one network to another network.
The only IPX/SPX routing knowledge that you might need to know from a troubleshooting standpoint is that there are two kinds of IPX/SPX routing: NLSP (NetWare Link Services Protocol) and RIP (Routing Information Protocol). A NetWare server thats configured for RIP cant talk to an NLSP router unless the NLSP router is running in RIP-compatibility mode. (See Hour 14 for a quick comparison of RIP and NLSP.) I havent seen a lot of problems related to this, but its worth knowing that there are differences between RIP (older) and NLSP (newer).
Youll configure TCP/IP the way you do any protocol: from INETCFG.NLM. The basic configuration is just the way youd configure a workstation. You do have, however, a couple more things to configure on a server, most notably the services that the server offers. To do this, use the UNICON utility. You can use UNICON to check the service configurations, as well as to start and stop the services if you suspect theyve gone to la-la land. As you can see from Figure 13.10, UNICON will configure the following items:
Figure 13.10 UNICON will configure UNIX-like services on your NetWare server.
See the UNI in UNICON? Think it might be referring to UNIX? Youre right! All these services, though ostensibly generic TCP/IP services, got their start in the UNIX world.
You can also check TCP/IP configuration files (or possibly restore the configurations from a backup tape) in the SYS:ETC directory.
In particular, the SYS:ETC/RESOLV.CFG is a really important configuration filesymbolic name lookup (DNS) wont work unless this is configured properly.
When you load TCPCON, you can check more TCP/IP-related statistics and functions than youd ever want to. TCPCON can handle many functions, as shown in Table 13.1.
Function | TCPCON Navigation |
---|---|
Check TCP/IP statistics and error counts | Statistics menu |
Check the routing table | IP routing table |
Check current TCP or UDP socket table (just like netstat -a in UNIX or Windows) | Protocol Information|TCP or UDP|Connections |
Check the MAC-to-TCP/IP address table (just like arp -a in UNIX or Windows) | Protocol Information|IP|IP Address Translations |
Cant load IPTRACE or PING? Believe it or not, these werent always included in the standard Novell TCP/IP distribution. Load the latest patches, and youll magically have these tools.
Other life-saving TCP/IP tools include these:
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