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Once in a while an issue comes up where application A gives some odd errors in eDirectory but those errors seem to be cosmetic as application A is still fine and works (unless you count the messages in ndstrace). What does this mean when you see a -714 from eDirectory while tracing LDAP that is talking about some "iterator"? What does an LDAP error 51 mean when everything still seems to return properly? Today I am going to try to share some information on Virtual List Views (VLV) by explaining what they are, how you can use them, and a few cases where they do not work with eDirectory.

Last week I was asked if there was a way to start an application at the command line and later come back to it from somewhere else. Normally in Linux/Unix (*nix) it is possible to 'background' a process and then return to it later on but that's only if you are still in the same session where the process was sent to the background. This is useful to have something run while you do other things but reconnecting to this session cannot be done with just the shell. Thankfully 'screen' is on Linux systems by default (all of them I've used anyway) and as a result, Linux Just Does That.

Every day it seems I find something new that Linux Just Does. Last week I finally decided I needed to learn about "shared storage" and started asking the resident experts here, who all pointed me to YaST. Much to my surprise iSCSI is built into YaST and works out of the box with SLES without much more than ten minutes and an understanding of the technology. For the quickest understanding of shared storage I can muster this article is now being created. Hopefully it will be as enlightening to others as this topic was to me.

Updated: Paul McKeith shares a guide on how to quickly build a lab environment, evaluate Access Manager SSL VPN, and subsequently deploy a single server SSL VPN soft appliance. The build process, fully described with screen shots and advice, will also help you better understand how the product works and what will be needed for the planning of a production roll out.

In the last year Novell has released the Novell Compliance Management Platform (NCMP) which is designed to tie a lot of components together in one great big mesh of happiness (so much happiness in fact that a demo system is named 'Utopia' which I presume leads directly to euphoria). Understanding the potential benefits of the NCMP for a company can take a bit of time but I wanted to provide that kind of an overview here. There will be some technical parts that I care about emphasizing but overall this is meant to cover what NCMP provides for those who really need to know.

Working at Novell in the Support organization I work with some of the best troubleshooters in and throughout the world. Many of the steps used in troubleshooting are common sense and laughed about commonly online ("Is it plugged in") and while these specifics are not that useful most of the time there are general practices that I have learned and feel need to be shared. The purpose of this article is to group everything that may help troubleshooting generally (and in some cases, specifically) for the benefit of those who may not have been in a support organization for several years. This is by no means the end-all, be-all of troubleshooting and I am by no means the best, but working in Novell's Support Forums some of these skills could speed up resolution times for those seeking help or even prevent the need for outside help altogether if applied.