Slow Connections and No Printer with NetWare Small Business Suite
Articles and Tips: qna
01 Mar 2001
Q.
Dear Ab-end: I've been installing the NetWare 5.1 Small Business Suite. I finally got the server up and running, but my connections seem really slow. It takes forever to get into administration tools and even my software programs run fairly slowly. My server is a Pentium III, 450 MHz, with 196 MB of RAM. I thought that would be plenty. I checked and the motherboard was YES tested. Also, my new printer isn't working. Do you have any ideas?
More Owner than IS in Provo, Utah
A.
Dear Owner: Without knowing the specifics of your situation, it's really hard to answer. I can give you a few hints, however.
By default, NetWare installs dual protocol stacks (IP and IPX). If your server doesn't need IP, disable it and let the client just use IPX. Some small businesses report faster networks with IPX than with IP. However, if you need to use IP, disable IPX and run just IP. That should still speed up your network. If your client is not in multicast range of your server, you will need to do more to set up IP than you do to set up IPX.
Actually, 196 MB RAM might not be enough if you're running the BorderManager Service, GroupWise, Web Server, and so on. I would never put less than 256 MB RAM in a server running Small Business Suite; 512 MB would be great for a 25-user network with all services running.
If you're in a switched environment, make certain your server is set up to force the speed and the duplex on the server NIC and on the Switch port. This is good practice in any server environment. Leaving the switch set to auto-negotiate can cause some performance issues.
Launching applications across the network from the server can cause performance issues with the applications, not to mention the extra load on your network. It is best to try to run your application's executables on the machines locally and store only the data on the server.
Check your hardware: things like NIC settings or drivers, hubs/switches, and routing could all be culprits in this setup. Your interrupt settings should be optimized. Your IRQ for a network board should be a lower priority than the IRQ of a controller. You might also need to switch to another network board. Be sure not to use IRQ 9(2) and 15 if at all possible, especially 9(2).
Because you have upgraded to NetWare 5.1, check to see that your SYS volume is not full. You should have 10-20% of your volume as free space.
From time to time, the Directory Entry Tables can become full and need to be purged. The most likely symptom is that you get an error saying that there is not enough room to create a directory. When you check your available space, make certain you have plenty of drive space available. To do this: log in with Admin rights, go to a DOS prompt, change to the drive letter that is mapped to the Root of your SYS volume, and type in the command PURGE /ALL. (F:\purge /all)
Make certain you have applied the latest Service Pack (either Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2a, as of this writing). Sometimes the multilingual versions of Service Pack 2a break the licensing. The workaround is usually to copy the correct SERVER.EXE to the C:\NWServer directory. Unfortuantely, that doesn't always work. Some customers have had to go back to Service Pack 1 in order to get the licensing working again.
Some of our customers have reported that after upgrading to NetWare for Small Business Suite 5.1, their queue-based printing quit working. Try this:
In the NetWare Administrator (NWAdmin) utility, select Printer | Communication and change the setting from Autoload to Manual.
At the server console, load NPRINTER PServer_Name 0.
Copy this load command to the AUTOEXEC.NCF file to automate the load.
You should find that your reseller is your best resource in your situation. Try contacting them with your questions. (Answers supplied by Isreal Forst, Tony Calderone, John Pugh, Cyle Dibble, and Helena Janitschek, all of Novell, Inc.)
* Originally published in Novell AppNotes
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