Novell 5 inaccessible

Is the novell server running the latest service pack and patches from Novell? Is the server in a tree or is it running in bindery mode? Is there anything that looks funny in Monitor? (load monitor is the command to check out the stats and hit tab to bring up the full stats page) Beware, that if the server is in a tree and it does not hold the master partition of the root object, that you must make sure that the server that contains the master partition of the root object, is on the version of Directory Services that the service pack is going to install on that server or you will have issues. You also can look in the server log to see if there are any error messages poping up.

You might want to look at possible hardware issues as well. could be a NIC problem. I've had similar experiences in the past with an intermittent NIC card.

The server is the only one on the network.
It probably does not have any patches since it was installed.
Where is the log for novell??

TIA

Ok, the log is SYS:System\SYS$LOG.ERR Make sure to check the nic and it may help to run some diagnostics on the memory, cpu etc. And as always have a backup before doing anything. Good Luck!!!

1st you should do a load config at the console so you can see what NICs you have and what they are bound to.
A useful tool that will give you tons of info is conlog. Edit the autoexec.ncf by loading nwconfig at the console and adding these two lines:
load conlog maximum=100 (this should be loaded right after the bind commands)
then add unload conlog at the end, exit autoexec.ncf and save. Next re-boot will create a file config.txt in the SYS volume and System directory.

Thanks to cm5400's info I was able to look at the log on the novell server and saw these odd looking entries. Can anyone tell me what they indicate?

5-16-2006 2:11:25 pm: IPXRTR-6.60-4
Severity = 1
60:2.9026 SAP router configuration error detected.
Node 0001E6822FB8 () claims network address 8CC606B1 should be 7FC49C38.

5-17-2006 9:19:42 am: DS-7.51-21
Severity = 1 Locus = 17 Class = 19
Bindery open requested by the SERVER

5-17-2006 9:19:42 am: DS-7.51-19
Severity = 1 Locus = 17 Class = 19
Directory Services: Local database is open

5-17-2006 9:19:55 am: NCP-5.10-66
Severity = 4 Locus = 18 Class = 6
The Network Address [IPX F6C831E:000001:451] has been registered as an NCP Service Address.

5-17-2006 9:41:00 am: DS-7.51-21
Severity = 1 Locus = 17 Class = 19
Bindery open requested by the SERVER

5-17-2006 9:41:00 am: DS-7.51-19
Severity = 1 Locus = 17 Class = 19
Directory Services: Local database is open

5-17-2006 9:41:15 am: NCP-5.10-66
Severity = 4 Locus = 18 Class = 6
The Network Address [IPX F6C831E:000001:451] has been registered as an NCP Service Address.

5-18-2006 5:58:56 am: SERVER-5.0-4631
Severity = 3 Locus = 18 Class = 6
WARNING! Server CFM1 experienced a critical error. The offending process was suspended or recovered. However, services hosted by this server may have been affected.

Thanks again.

Did the server reboot or did you dismount the sys vol during the time frame of 9:15 and 9:41? Directory Services should not just be opening and closing the database as far as I know unless it ran a dsrepair. Has dsrepair been run recently? Have you run a vrepair on the sys volume? If you have the long name space enabled on the volume use the v_long.nlm (I think that is the name, it should be "c:\nwserver\v_long.nlm") to repair the volume.

Thanks for all the help. I am on vacation this week and will pick it back up sometime next week.
Thanks again, chat in a week.

Your server has abended.(abnormal ending)
There should be an abend.log in the SYS:\SYSTEM directory.
It is a ascii file. Post the results (the first 30 or 40 lines) to this forum.