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Delay in accessing netware servers

pokwan
Level 1
Level 1

Hi,

We have several 5500 switches connected to each other using ATM backbone. Lately I have a problem where users have problem accessing the novell servers when the user startups the PC to logon in the morning. The problem only occurs if the user have the PC turned off the night before and the problem will not occur if the PC is left on during the night. The problem will only happen at random on the switches. In other words, not all users within the same switch have the problem (there are a few novell servers and users on the same switch may logon to different novell servers). The problem happened to most switches and most novell servers.

The error messge is "... cannot find network path.. select another server..." When you are in the PC and check the novell servers, they are all there and you can actually attach to it.

To temporarily resolve the problem, we have the user log off and on again. Restarting or turn off and on the PC will not work immediately (only after many tries or wait for a few minutes.. could be 15mins ..)

It sounds like timing issue?? Looks like the PC is performing the startup quicker than the network response??

We have portfast enabled (straight from not-connected to forwarding) on all user ports (except the servers switches) on all switches. I thought with this set, we should not have an issue as mentioned above.

Does anyone know what the problem might be?

Thanks.

2 Replies 2

milan.kulik
Level 10
Level 10

Some tips:

a) Are absolutely sure that portfast is working OK on yout PC ports? Have you tried sh spantree at the momemt PC starts?

b) Have you tried to put a sniffer on the line to see if GetNearestServer ..... dialogue is running?

c) I remember there was a Preferred server parameter in the Novell client configuration (several years ago when I was involved in Novell networks). Have you tried to play with it?

Regards,

Milan

nnorthedge
Level 1
Level 1

This sounds like the same problem I had a few years back. My problem was the PC NIC and switch could nt agree on the bandwidth and duplex before the PC would time out for login. I had to manually assign the bandwidth and duplex on both the NIC (3COM I think) and the switch. After that, all was fine.

Norman

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