Problems with Unknown Attributes in a Mixed NetWare Environment
Articles and Tips: qna
01 Jul 2002
Q.
We have three NetWare 6 servers with Support Pack 1 installed. One of the NetWare 6 servers is the current master of all replicas. Additionally we have a bunch of NetWare 5.1 servers with Support Pack 4 and NDS v7.58 installed, one NetWare 5.0 server with Support Pack 6a and NDS 7.58, and one NetWare 4.2 server with Support Pack 9 and NDS 6.14 installed.
Our current replica rings have two of the NetWare 6 servers and three or more (depending on the replica) NetWare 5.1 servers. One replica includes the NetWare 5.0 server.
Here is the problem: The master NetWare 6 server and the other NetWare 6 servers with Read/Write partitions see the NetWare 6 server objects for what they are. The NetWare 5.1 servers see them as unknown. If I look into the objects on the 5.1 servers with DSBrowse, I can see that the server attribute (and lots of the various other attributes for the server) are there, but they still show up as unknown.
All of the servers appear to be talking with each other, some of the other errors in communication have disappeared now that Support Pack 4 and NDS 7.58 are on the NetWare 5 servers. However, I can't edit or view any of the server objects if my tools happen to hit the NetWare 5 servers first. I'm assuming that there is some attribute that is not being handled quite right on the NetWare 5 servers.
The things that I have tried so far include the following. Initially only the NetWare 6, master server had good copies of these objects. So, I ran dsrepair -p (which is marks all unknown objects as reference, presumably telling the NDS database to look to someone who knows something for the information) on each of the R/W servers.
In DSBrowse with the -a switch enabled, I told the master to send each of the objects. Then not really sure if the others would receive the objects without prompting, I ran DSBrowse and told each of them to receive the objects. The only one that seemed to really get the object information was the other NetWare 6 server.
I had thought to use ConsoleOne and try to add some of the attributes, but one of the things that the NetWare 5 servers don't have on the objects under Other, are the class information details. And apparently those aren't things that you can just add after the fact from ConsoleOne.
One more note to this whole thing. Prior to any of this, we had collapsed the entire tree back to just a root partition, run DSRepair, and started putting partitions back on. Right now we are at three partitions. Any suggestions?
Obscuring Objects in Omaha
A.
Dear Obscuring: The objects that are showing up as unknown on the older servers most likely have some Auxiliary Class extensions on them. When objects have these, the servers running eDirectory will see the object like it should be (NetWare 6 by default). But to make it work on older servers, the NetWare 6 servers "lie" to the older revisions of NDS and the object gets seen as unknown.
Once you upgrade the NetWare 5.x servers to eDirectory 8.6.2 or greater, the objects will mutate back into real (not unknown) objects on those replicas.
* Originally published in Novell AppNotes
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