Re: Help!!!!

["Adam Williams" <awilliam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
> And our Novell servers all over the district keep getting Incomplete
> Packets.
>
That sounds like a bad cable somewhere,  incomplete packets that is.  Is there
any possible source of "bursty" interference,  a machine shop with a welder,  a
radio transmitter...  Had a similar problem is a subnet and found that the
janitor had wrapped an ethernet cable around a power cable to keep from running
over it with the vaccum.  It stumped me for weeks.  But I only know ethernet,
 nothing about Token Ring.

> We have all of our new labs listed in a database... it helps... but not
> enough... we can't pin point all of our errors.... they are like phantoms
> sometimes.
>
> You said you knew of a Linux product that will do IPX routing... at the
> moment... IPX is a requirement.  Will this be impossible for someone who
> knows very little about linux??
>

The product they're talking about is mars_nwe (I assume).  I know nothing about
IPX and was baffled by the docs when I looked at them,  so knowing Novell
jargon may be more or equally important.

An excerp from the IPX-HOWTO:

  7.  Configuring your Linux machine as an IPX router.

  If you have a number of IPX segments that you wish to internetwork you
  need the services of a router. In the Novell environment there are two
  pieces of information which are necessary to be propagated around the
  network.  They are the network routing information propagated using
  Novell RIP, and the service advertisement information propagated using
  Novell SAP. Any router must support both of these protocols to be
  useful in most situations.

  Linux has support for both of these protocols and can be fairly easily
  made to function as a fully Novell compliant router.
  The Linux kernel IPX support actually manages the IPX packet
  forwarding across interfaces, but it does this according to the rules
  coded into the IPX routing table. Linux needs a program to implement
  the Novell RIP and SAP to ensure that the IPX routing table is built
  correctly and updated periodically to reflect changes in the network
  status.

  Volker Lendecke <lendecke@namu01.gwdg.de> has developed a routing
  daemon that will do this for you.
  You can find ipxripd at:

  sunsite.unc.edu
  <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/Filesystems/ipxripd-0.7.tgz>

  or at Volkers home site at:

  ftp.gwdg.de <ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/ncpfs/ipxripd-0.7.tgz>

  Configuring your Linux machine to act as a router is very
  straightforward.  The steps you must take are:

  1. Build your kernel with IPX, Ethernet and /proc support.

  2. Obtain, compile and install the ipxd daemon program.

  3. Boot the new kernel and ensure that each of the Ethernet cards has
     been properly detected and there are no hardware conflicts.

  4. Enable the IPX protocol on each of the interfaces using the
     ipx_interface command described above.

  5. Start the ipxd daemon program.

  Consider the following simple network:

   IPX Addr: 0x01000000  802.2
  |--------------------------|
                |
                \_________________________
                                          \          Linux Router
   IPX Addr: 0x02000000  802.2             \
  |--------------------------|              \   eth0/-----------\
                |                            \--====|           |
                \_________________________          | IPX route |
                                          \     eth1|  Table    |
   IPX Addr: 0x03000000  etherII           \----====|    ^      |
  |--------------------------|                      |    |      |
                |                               eth2|  IPXd     |
                \______________________________/====|           |
                                                    |  SAPd     |
   IPX Addr: 0x04000000  etherII                eth3|           |
  |--------------------------|                 /====|           |
                |                              |    \___________/
                \______________________________/

  The configuration for the above network would look like:

  # ipx_interface add eth0 802.2 0x0100000000
  # ipx_interface add eth1 802.2 0x0200000000
  # ipx_interface add eth2 etherii 0x0300000000
  # ipx_interface add eth3 etherii 0x0400000000
  # ipxd

  You should then wait a moment or two and check your
  /proc/net/ipx_route file and you should see it populated with the IPX
  routes relevant to your configuration and any learned from any other
  routers in the network.