Organization: Family and Consumer Sciences
Priority:     normal
X-Mailer:     Pegasus Mail v2.3 (R4).
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.novell
Date:         Wed, 7 Oct 1992 21:15:55 EDT
Reply-To:     Novell LAN Interest Group <NOVELL@SUVM.BITNET>
From:         Mark Edward Toomey <MTOOMEY@HESTIA.FCS.UGA.EDU>
Subject:      Weirdness

    A cry from the poltergeist land. In July of 1991, we set up a
Novell LAN w/286 2.2 Netware. Last month we upgraded to 386 3.11.
Over the past year, I've run into quite a few strange & inexplicable
problems that some network gurus on campus have ultimately attributed
to 'ghosts in the machine'.

Here's the basic setup:

Server: 33/386 Dell w/8 Meg Ram & 330Meg Hard Disk, w/WD 16-bit e-net
        card on Thin e-net attached to the campus backbone via a
        CentreCom Repeater, Interlan Bridge & ChipCom Ethermodem III.

Mailer: MegaTrends 286 Motherboard w/ AMI BIOS, 2Meg Memory in an XT
        box w/Jameco controller card & ST-225 20Meg Hard Disk w/WD 16-
        bit e- net card running Charon 4.0 software.

Machine Topology: 20 asst. PC/XT/AT lab machines on thin e-net to the
                  CentreCom Repeater.

    75 asst. PCs faculty/staff machines using AUI
    drops & 2 or 4 port transceivers with 8 & 16 bit WD(SMC) e-net
    cards.

    25 asst. Macs talking AppleTalk on LocalTalk using a GatorBox CS
    as a Gateway to TCP/IP services and via Novell's Mac NLM, Novell
    services.

Mail Software:  PCs - Pegasus Mail 2.3r4
                Mac - Pegasus Mail 2.0

Here's the weirdness:

    * Pmail Mac has a couple of problems.
    1) Since 286->386 upgrade, Pmail 2.0 had to have it's home
mailbox location changed to reflect the new mailbox/ids created by
386 3.11 for user objects.

    2) Users can't send to a Novell userid (recipient gets malformed
messages, & 'sent' mail document remains on screen) but CAN send to
full internet address via Charon Mailqueue. No, I haven't set PCONFIG
to do this!

    3) Intermittantly, users trying to send to an SMTP address are
told they don't have an SMTP gateway, even though they do.


    * Novell & Ethernet Problems
    1) When trying to implement a fix to the above problem on advise
from the Novell list (changing EVERYONE rights from CW to C in
SYS:MAIL as AppleShare doesn't recognize CW) I used Filer to check
Who has Rights here in both Public & Mail. The Please Wait box comes
up for ETERNITY! and a 3 finger salute is required. Now only
having c. 125 users & a dozen groups, I assume this isn't
attributable to an oversized bindery. This same thing
occured while using 286 2.2 & the campus CNE couldn't figure it out
then either. Weirdness.

    2) There's problems with some PCs & 8-bit Zeniths physically
distant from the server. Performance is intolerable even for
8-bit machines. These are Western Digital or SMC 8-bit cards & when a
sniffer is placed on the line it appears as if the signal strength of
the card is not enough to send acknowledgments to the server before
the server times out.


Whew, ... well, I'll pause & see what y'all have to say before
getting more bizarre.



----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Edward Toomey                          mtoomey@hestia.fcs.uga.edu
Computer & Network Support                  toomey@athena.cs.uga.edu
College of Family & Consumer Sciences       mtoomey@uga.cc.uga.edu
University of Georgia                       MTOOMEY@UGA
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Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU