Syncronizing passwords, copying users.

This does not answer your question, but is there a reason that all the Branches are under separate trees, instead of one big happy? If not, it might help to merge your trees and then your life will become much easier, as will maintaining the servers.

I agree w/ crazycat. Merge the separate trees into one large tree. With NDS, there is no reason to have more than one tree within your organization. What you might want to consider is to create separate container objects for your different branches.

For example, you merge the separate trees for each branch into one tree called FIRSTBANK. Then in the merged tree, have an organizational unit (OU) called BRANCHES, and then subdivide BRANCHES into more detailed OUs, like MAIN, BRANCH1, BRANCH2, etc. Now, you can create (or move) user accounts into the container associated with their branch. Their FQUN (fully-qualified username) would be user.branch1.branches.firstbank, for example. You might not even want to mess with an OU called BRANCHES, and just go to user.branch1.firstbank, for example.

Once your trees are merged, you can very easily assign rights to users in any branch (OU container) to any network resource (leaf object) on the tree.

You can not syncronise passwords between trees. As the other answers have said you will have to merge the trees. It is not an easy process, but there is plenty of documentation on Novell's web site.
As for creating identical users, templates is the correct and easiest way.

I agree with Crazy CAT IF in fact you have multiple trees in Netware. Do you have different 'Tree' names or are the branches Organizational Units (OU) under the 'Tree'?

You're all coming up with the answer I felt might be the case (but I've been in denial).

NOTE: I may not be able to answer your questions effectively--I took over this position just over a month ago. All the systems were already in place. I can't answer why things were done, or even how at this point. I just fix stuff, and if it works, I run like hell..

I know that I CAN administer the different locations..

What exactly is a context? All the branches are in different CONTEXTS and I guess I'm assuming (yet another gasp) that means a separate tree. How can I tell easily? The closest branch is over 80 miles from me...

Can someone explain Templates a little? I've been at the Novell website, but it's very complex for a beginner like me.

Templates can help you with your default settings.

You will create the object TEMPLATE and assign it defaults.

In your case you would probably create a location template or a job template - whichever seems to fill the biggest need. Let's say it is a job template: All the loan officers belong to the group LOANOFF, they all have a user directory, the same password defaults, the same department information. When you set up the template you will give it a name that means something to you, such as: LOANTMP, on the first screen you will check that they have a home directory and you will select the location that the directory will be in (this will create a subdirectory underneath when you create your user), you will then check the box tocreate additional properties. This will bring up the User Details - fill out everything that will be the same for all users that will be created with this template (the group LOANOFF, the department name, etc.).
When you are ready to add a new user, who just so happens to be a Loan Officer, you will create a new USER object, this will open the USER create screen, you can check template - it will allow you to browse to find it - select LOANTMP. This user will now have all the defaults that youset in your LOANTMP template. You will need to add the login name and anything else that is a one-off that you may want this user to have.
Hint: If you need to make changes to users that you already have in place, highlight all the users you need to make the same change to and then you can select "Details on Multiple Users" to change the users all at once, and not one at a time.

To everyone: thank you--your answers have been very helpful. (Even if they only confirmed my worst fears, I've stopped looking for an answer I won't find in the manuals..) As a result, I am planning to close the question and award everyone with the points. I only have three things to ask before I do.

1) How hard is it to change from multiple trees to a single tree with multiple organizations? Is it something a beginner could handle?

2) Crazycat, your answer on templates was informative, and I went to work and tried it. It works great on a Novell 5.1 server, but I can't seem to find the options to create templates from an existing user on a Novell 4.1 server. Am I doing something wrong, or is this feature unavailable in 4.11?

3) Not too important, but can I access a Novell server using Linux? (Red Hat 6.2 dist.)

Again, thank you.

You said each branch has its own context. This most likely means that you are dealing with one tree. To test this, try the following. Log in as admin, and open network neighborhood. You should be able to browse to a volume on the main-office server.Right click on a folder, then select Netware Rights on the popup menu. You should be able to browse through the NDS tree to select groups from any context in that tree. The visual depiction of a tree structure is similar to a directory tree file structure. Browsing is about the same. If your in luck all the contexts you are managing will be availible in the NDS browse portion of the Netware Rights dialog box. You will then be able to select a group or user from any context to give them rights to this folder. No duplicated logins will be required. This works for rights to print queues as well as file folders. Once the users have rights, the next step is mapping a drive. Look at a current container login script to see the syntax for a fully qualififed volume name, and its use. Add a map command int the container login script or user login script to map the drives in other contexts. It is wise to complete all mapings in one context before starting to map drives in another. Since you have 56K lines the logins will not be fast. NEVER map a search drive (novell's term for a drive in the "path" environmental variable) over a 56k line. Doing it will slow down the PC to the point most users think it is locked up and just reboot. Good luck with the new job. NDS takes a little will to get familiar with, but then it is really easy to do most administrative chores.

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