1.) How do I make a Novell book disk?
2.) Do I have to have the original Novell disks or can I create a Novell boot disk from the image on the server?
Background:
My physician client has an old medical accounting system which runs on
Netware
3.12. It's a proprietary system running on Netware. It won't boot
anymore.
The software is installed on an older Dell server. The office in which
the
server sits has experienced a number of power outages lasting long
enough to
where the batteries drain on the UPS. So my guess is some Novell
operating
system file is now corrupt.
When the software boots it says it wants to mount volume SYS. Then the
software tells me "Mirror copies of the volume directory do not match".
I cannot restore any files until the operating system is running (namely
Netware). This system has an old copy of Backup Exec for Netware
running on
it. But this Backup Exec doesn't have IDR (the disaster recovery
module) .
So, I'm wondering if you know of someone who might still know something
about
this ancient operating system. The physician does not have any Novell
3.12
disks.
I was able to find the original company who wrote the software. They say:
Run VREPAIR
1.) First you will need the Novell 3.12 boot disk
2.) Insert disk into floppy drive and reboot server
3.) When the system gets to the message regarding mounting volume sys, type: dismount sys <enter>
4.) Press the <F5> key
5.) Type : cd \server3.12 <enter>
6.) Type: server -nn -ns <enter>
7.) At the ALCON3 prompt press <enter>
8.) Then D0002 <enter>
9.) At the ALCON3 prompt, type: load c:\server.312\vprepair <enter>
10.) Take the option to Repair a Volume
11.) Press the spacebar through the messages
12.) Answer 'y' to write changes
13.) Take the option to go to settings (<F1>)
14.) You will see 2 options: 1- Do not pause and 0 - To continue
15.) Use option 1
16.) When the procedure is complete, rerun it again to make sure all errors are gone.
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Uhm, you seemingly already asked this, and got extensive answers, but failed to provide feedback:
http://www.experts-exchang
>When the software boots it says it wants to mount volume SYS. Then the
software tells me "Mirror copies of the volume directory do not match".
At this point type down at the system console and the enter.
Then follow these steps from above:
9.) At the ALCON3 prompt, type: load c:\server.312\vprepair <enter>
10.) Take the option to Repair a Volume
11.) Press the spacebar through the messages
12.) Answer 'y' to write changes
13.) Take the option to go to settings (<F1>)
14.) You will see 2 options: 1- Do not pause and 0 - To continue
15.) Use option 1
16.) When the procedure is complete, rerun it again to make sure all errors are gone.
IF YOU RUN INTO A NAMESPACE ERROR PROBLEM,refer to the original question you posted.
Or after step 9 type in Load c:\server.312\OS2.nam
Also, as you know from your other question, and from the body of your current Questino, on NetWare 3.12 the system load directory is C:\SERVER.312. It changed to C:\NWSERVER with 4.x.
SO,
if you follow the recommendations outlined by sgdought and maques here, and by several other Experts in the other Question, keeping that directory naming in mind, you SHOULD be able to repair your volume.
If you need to boot from a boot disk, for some reason, just create an MS-DOS, PC-DOS or DR-DOS bootable floppy, and copy the C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS and the C:\SERVER.312 directory with just the minimum files required for booting NetWare. That would be SERVER.EXE and any driver and NLM files that load >on *your* server< from C:\SERVER.312. Note that not all files in the C:\server.312 directory are actually used - most are driver files and localization files that never will be referenced or loaded on your particular server. There's no list anyone can give you of what your server would need, and no program was written to determine that for you and make a boot floppy with all the NetWare files required to boot without a DOS partition.
That set of files can easily exceed the capacity of a diskette, which is why Novell, way back when, when people were so used to having a boot floppy for their NetWare 2.x systems that they wanted boot diskettes for 3.x too, recommended to reference the DOS partition's SERVER.EXE from the boot floppy, making a boot floppy kinda useless. All it does is let you boot if your dos partition was intact but no longer bootable.
It maybe can be done, if you have the time and patience to figure out all the files that are needed, as long as you don't exceed the size of your floppy. With that in mind, you may conclude that the boot floppy thing isn't worth pursuing, since you ARE booting well past the point where a boot floppy would do you any good, even if you could putz around and make a workable boot floppy.
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Answer for Membership
by: sgdoughtPosted on 2006-01-21 at 21:12:30ID: 15759316
Novell boots off of Dos. First DOS loads, the the autoexec.bat files loads nwserver which loads Novell. Boot from a Windows 98 boot disk. Then when you get to a DOS prompt, change to the c drive by typing c: change to the nwserver directory, then type "server -na" (without the quotes of course ;-) which will load Netware without running the autoexec.ncf The netware files may be in a different directory than nwserver. If there is not an nwserver directory, search by using the dir command:
dir nwserver*.* /s
Then you can run vrepair at the server console prompt.
Example
c:> cd nwserver
c:\nwserver:>server -na (OR SERVER -NS IF IT IS REALLY HOSED)
vrepair