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dsktip.txt
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1989-03-20
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A Couple NetWare disk tips:
In this article, reasons for not having a DOS partition on
your NetWare hard disk(s) as well as common FAT errors will be
discussed and remedies suggested.
While not common, there are occasions where having a DOS (or
other non-NetWare operating system) partition on a NetWare hard
disk may be of value. Current versions of NetWare have the
following limitations which serve to prevent the existence of
non-NetWare partitions:
a) If the DOS (non-NetWare) partition is at the END of the disk,
it is walked on by HOTFIX (NetWare's bad disk sector recovery
system) and vica versa, unrecoverably destroying data for both.
Note that the NetWare partition must occupy the first (track 0)
part of the disk, and that there can only be one NetWare partition
on a disk. A partition is a contiguous area of the disk. Also,
a partition may be divided into two or more volumes.
b) Various versions of DOS constrain the system as to WHERE the
partition must begin and end (within a range), frequently this
range is unworkable.
1) Recall that NetWare MUST exist at the beginning of the disk
(track 0, etc.).
2) Recall there can only be one NetWare partition on a disk.
Also, for most DOS versions, the disk be no larger than 32Mb
if the intention is to boot the disk with DOS.
c) Performance is crippled when the DOS partition is serviced.
This degradation in performance comes from the destruction of
elevator seeking (innate to NetWare) because DOS takes over
control of the disk.
d) There have been cases (under various versions of DOS and
NetWare) where NetWare believes the whole disk belongs to it even
though there is a DOS partition on the disk. Thus, when NetWare
gets to the point where it would start to consume space the DOS
partition is "sitting" on, NetWare just plows through it, leaving
the DOS partition in disarray. And consequently, when DOS
accesses its partition it will clobbering the NetWare partition's
data.
The best solution to the multiple partition disk is to use
separate disk drives for each operating system.
One of the most frequent and, to the uninitiated,
misunderstood FAT (File Allocation Table) errors is that of:
*** WARNING *** FAT Entry <xxxx> Marked Used with no File.
The marked used with no file "error" is totally harmless, it
is a "for your information" (FYI) type error. What happens is
this: When a file is opened on the network for write activity, an
extra disk block is automatically reserved for that file's private
use. If not closed properly; i.e. the server is downed
improperly, the station locks up (more so with versions before
2.0), etc.; that extra block is not used. Furthermore, the extra
block (just sitting in anticipation to be used) is not physically
linked into that file until it is used, so, if a file is not
closed properly, the extra block will be still marked 'in use',
but will not be 'attached' to any file. The system (NetWare file
system) knows the difference between a current in use block, and a
block that was in use (i.e. before last reboot of server) so,
these blocks marked used with no file are in effect going to be
reused again as soon as possible, may be not immediately, because
Novell does do a 'best fit' for large block operations such as
file copies. The integrity of the system is still there with the
"marked used with no file", only when you get the evil type errors
like data mirror mismatch, multiple allocation, out of order or
file out of bounds do you have serious integrity problems. And if
some of these bad errors show up (most notably by the "abandon
volume mount?" prompt) do not let the server come up, go ahead and
run VREPAIR first (hopefully you are comfortable with your
backup), you could let it come up, but just know that the first
copy of the FAT and DIR(ectory) tables will replace the second,
"mirror copy", set to make everything 'match'.
The above discourse has provided information about often
asked questions regarding NetWare. Hopefully this information is
of use to the reader. However, if there are any unanswered
questions, I can be reached on NetWire (on COMPUSERVE, GO NOVUSER)
under account 70007,3430.