Rejected an incomplete NCP packet

(Last modified: 15Nov2002)

This document (10027238) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

symptom

fact

Formerly TID 2924311

symptom

A NetWare 4.10 server would randomly max out SP's (Service Processes) and PRB's (Packet Receive Buffers). Clients would therefore lose connections and the console thread disappeared. Monitor was still active and responsive however - Lan info showed NO ECB avails at 1600 for one card and 1700 for the other - not increasing. Server had to be rebooted.

Error: "Rejected an incomplete NCP packet from Station n"

Error: "Rejected an NCP with bad subfunction length."

Error: "Processed an incomplete NCP from Station n"

Errors occur at the console.

Large amounts of collisions were seen on the wire.

Three problems were being displayed at the same time :
1. RIGHTS.EXE with the /i parameter builds the NCP packet (NCP 22 50) incorrectly.
2. Older VLM's are known to cause bad NCP messages. See TID1004409.
3. The Compaq driver was not setting full-duplex mode correctly causing lan errors.

fix

Troubleshooting

For problem 1.
The following parameters were set:

set display NCP bad component warnings=on
set display NCP bad length warnings=on

The various operations were traced. The traces indicated that the packet is being built wrong. The NCP call is Get Object Effective Rights For Directory Entry (Function 22 Subfunction 50). The subfunction length should be 7+PathLength but the packet trace shows the subfunction length as 6. This is not a problem with the lan driver at the file server. The NCP call is being built wrongly.

For problem 2.
Upgrade all client software especially DOS/VLM clients.

For problem 3.
First check that the hub supports full-duplex ethernet and has the latest firmware. The customer's hub did support this feature and had the latest firmware. You should not see collisions on a full-duplex ethernet link. CPQ2ETH.LAN V3.10 was not enabling full-duplex mode correctly. Downgrading the driver reduced the amount of collisions vastly. Compaq have a new driver available that fixes this.

1. New RIGHTS.EXE available in intraNetWare Support Pack 3 (IWSP3A.EXE or later)
2. Upgrade client software.
3. New Compaq driver.

document

Document Title:	Rejected an incomplete NCP packet
Document ID:	10027238
Solution ID:	1.0.56634849.2546882
Creation Date:	25Feb2000
Modified Date:	15Nov2002
Novell Product Class:	Connectivity Products NetWare Novell BorderManager Services

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