Greetings,
I would be grateful if anybody can kindly give a pointer to port a Working netware 3.12 server using Centos >=5.x KVM howto?
On Tue, 2011-09-06 at 23:20 +0530, Rajagopal Swaminathan wrote:
Greetings,
I would be grateful if anybody can kindly give a pointer to port a Working netware 3.12 server using Centos >=5.x KVM howto?
There are so many variables that aren't mentioned...
Do you currently have a CentOS box running KVM?
If no, this is your first step. Since a virtual server can run multiple virtual machines, it is only useful if you intend to run multiple virtual machines.
What does your Netware server currently do?
If it does more than file and print services, you will have to determine how you would replace those other services.
Netware 3 defaulted to using the IPX protocol for sharing file and print services. Are you still using IPX? If so, you are looking at a significant network reconfiguration.
Netware 3 could integrate with a variety of client OS's; Unix, DOS, OS/2 and MS windows. What method is your server using to provide services? There might be lots of changes to client setup and software, but look at Samba. It can be setup with a workgroup for file and print services that might be sufficiently similar to how you are currently working. The differences between a physical CentOS server with Samba and a virtualized CentOS server running Samba are minimal and don't directly effect Samba configuration.
There might not be a simple document or a series of simple documents to point you at. It might be easier to setup a new network with the new server and a few clients to work out the concepts and any issues you're going to run into. Once you have everything working well on your new network, do a last copy of current data and migrate all your workstations.
I hope I'm mentioning use cases that don't apply. Hopefully, you already have significant CentOS experience. Hopefully, this might be a simple file and print server migration for MS Windows clients. The broad wording of your request might just be language barrier.
Greetings,
On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 12:34 AM, Ed Heron Ed@heron-ent.com wrote:
On Tue, 2011-09-06 at 23:20 +0530, Rajagopal Swaminathan wrote:
There are so many variables that aren't mentioned...
Do you currently have a CentOS box running KVM?
I have used centos with KVM,brctrl etc.
What does your Netware server currently do?
Just just pure and simple file storage. The worst part of it is The client has to be a DOS6.22 with some custom ISA base hardware.
Netware 3 defaulted to using the IPX protocol for sharing file and print services. Are you still using IPX? If so, you are looking at a significant network reconfiguration.
Indeed. with 802.3 frame etc :)
There might be lots of changes to client setup and software,
but look at Samba. It can be setup with a workgroup for file and print
Now, How to access Samba with Dos 6.22? :p
One main thought that first came to my mind is about the NIC Driver under KVM I do understand that the Centos5 can present it as different types of NIC (Intel, Realtek etc.)
I am investigating it further.
Hopefully, you already have significant CentOS experience.
Last 6 years or so I have worked only Fedora/Centos/RHEL. Since then I have tried avoid taking calls windows etc.
But this call I took because I have significant experience in netware too about 10 years 2.2 to 4.10 with NDS etc
The broad wording of your request might just be language barrier.
I realised that.
I will experiment further share my experience sometime later.
On Wed, 2011-09-07 at 19:54 +0530, Rajagopal Swaminathan wrote:
Greetings,
On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 12:34 AM, Ed Heron Ed@heron-ent.com wrote:
On Tue, 2011-09-06 at 23:20 +0530, Rajagopal Swaminathan wrote:
There are so many variables that aren't mentioned...
Do you currently have a CentOS box running KVM?
I have used centos with KVM,brctrl etc.
What does your Netware server currently do?
Just just pure and simple file storage. The worst part of it is The client has to be a DOS6.22 with some custom ISA base hardware.
Netware 3 defaulted to using the IPX protocol for sharing file and print services. Are you still using IPX? If so, you are looking at a significant network reconfiguration.
Indeed. with 802.3 frame etc :)
There might be lots of changes to client setup and software,
but look at Samba. It can be setup with a workgroup for file and print
Now, How to access Samba with Dos 6.22? :p
There was a workgroup client for DOS that used TCP/IP. I can't vouch for it's working, but try ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/BusSys/Clients/MSCLIENT/
One main thought that first came to my mind is about the NIC Driver under KVM I do understand that the Centos5 can present it as different types of NIC (Intel, Realtek etc.)
I am investigating it further.
Hopefully, you already have significant CentOS experience.
Last 6 years or so I have worked only Fedora/Centos/RHEL. Since then I have tried avoid taking calls windows etc.
But this call I took because I have significant experience in netware too about 10 years 2.2 to 4.10 with NDS etc
I, also, supported Netware 2 and 3. I avoided 4 due to NDS and the availability of Samba. It was a big deal when the Internet was gaining momentum. At first, we had multiple protocols and multi-protocol routers. My memory is vague but I'm pretty sure Netware 3 could run NetBIOS on a TCP/IP stack.
The broad wording of your request might just be language barrier.
I realised that.
I will experiment further share my experience sometime later.
So, are you looking to move your existing Netware 3 server into a virtual environment? Or, are you looking to replace an existing Netware 3 server with a CentOS equivalent?
I would suggest setting up a CentOS server with Samba and convert the DOS network stack, if you can. Samba appears to be much more supportable, currently. Take a look at the FreeDOS project, too, as an example of getting DOS to work in a more recent environment. The biggest concern (after getting the clients to talk to Samba) is that there have been a few choices made in Samba with respect to file sharing/locking mechanisms. With old software, you may have to look at those settings.
If you attempt to virtualize Netware, you may run into issues, though it'd be an interesting exercise. I don't know if a Linux hypervisor will handle IPX packets without IPX support installed. You might need to check for an ipx kernel module. Also, my version of Virtual Machine Manager running on CentOS 5 with Xen doesn't give me any sort of Netware OS option when creating a new virtual machine, so you'll probably have to play with settings. I google'd netware virtual machine and saw a few links to virtualizing Netware 3 under VMWare which might give you some insights.
Either way, do it in a separate test environment to work out any issues prior to production deployment.
If I hadn't been strongly encouraged (successfully) to de-clutter my software repository, I'd pull out my old Netware 3.12 disks and try installing on a virtual machine.
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Ed Heron -
Rajagopal Swaminathan