Blog Entry

Submitted by tim_fitch on 30 July 2008 - 10:32am.

Quote: "It is too bad that you guys have missed the boat on this, or have you just CEDED the file and print server business to Microsoft?"

CEDED? I certainly hope this is not the case. Tho, I have asked myself if Novell has just tried to force their more rounded and lucrative products into square hole at times just to get a product released. But I would not agree they have missed the boat on OES2.

Submitted by widegren on 30 July 2008 - 11:19pm.

NetWare folks are stabbed in their backs and left to bleed to death by Novell. Pretty soon we will all be extinct.

Submitted by dwall72 on 31 July 2008 - 7:58am.

I agree a simpler install method would be helpful, and some progress has been made, but not enough. I have been using Netware longer than Linux, but I do enjoy Linux more so some of these concerns are less for me. But I do see your point. In fact, my first installs of NNLS and OES left me confused. I too thought the OES disc would give me what I wanted. Once I figured out to install Linux, then add on OES, I was confronted by endless CD swapping to get installed. This improved some, but creating Installation Sources was the way to go. Novell certainly could do a better job making the install and config process simpler and easier to understand for the non-Linux crowd.

I do agree about the flakiness of iManager, the lack of consistency authenticating to iManager and Remote Manager, and other issues in that area. It is very frustrating to be working with one, and have it break during an upgrade or for no apparent reason, or have it not work out of the box.

Submitted by mrj412 on 31 July 2008 - 9:39am.

I keep reading posts like this and users in the forum who are jumping into OES/L with little to no Linux experience and then start ranting. Did you do the same your first week with Windows or NetWare? This is a new platform and requires a new set of skills. As with anything, a little education and experience goes a long way.

I have been using and administrating Linux for many years and was brought on board in my current position to migrate our company's NetWare servers to Linux. Over the past two years we have successfully migrated about 250 of them, leaving only a handful left. NSS, NCP, iPrint, DNS, DHCP, eDirectory, GroupWise and ZENworks all running on Linux. The road hasn't always been easy but it has certainly been worth it.

Complaining about the add on installation of OES shows a clear misunderstanding. The fact that OES2 is an add on to the base SLES10 install was a huge step forward from OES1. First, it clearly demonstrates that these are features added to an already stable OS and it also means that OES2 is not a completely separate product and doesn't require additional hardware compatibility certifications. It is also much easier to patch and maintain.

The software stacks used to run iManager and the other OES2 features are used in NetWare as well, so that is hardly an argument.

It seems that you want software to require you to know as little as possible about the OS and its functionality. To be a good admin requires you to delve into the products you support to maintain them and keep them running smoothly.

I would recommend anyone jumping into OES Linux to get to know the base SLES OS and then you will have the knowledge to understand and appreciate the functionality that OES2 brings to that platform.

Submitted by ecyoung on 31 July 2008 - 2:49pm.

3rd time's the charm (hopefully).

Something my org has really had a problem with: NSS on OES-Linux. We're used to a lot of single-disk sweet-and-simple servers. When you have your Linux boot volume and EVMS and NSS all on the same disk, it's really just asking for mega-troubles. I can't tell you how many times a kernel update or nss update or evms update has blown up our single disk servers. We ended up rebuilding many of them back to Netware (handles single-disk servers just fine thanks).

Thankfully it sounds like EVMS is going bye-bye for SLES 11 and OES 3. Until then, it sure would be nice if OES2sp1 added full support for NSS under LVM.

Submitted by mfaris01 on 31 July 2008 - 4:13pm.

Have you ever heard of the GPL? The separation from OES2 and SLES was because of the GPL. Novell wouldn't make any $$$ if they HAD to give the source away for their products. So... they separated their proprietary software from the open source.
If it's THAT much trouble for you to ADD a product to your SLES server, then when you switch to MS, be sure to get the version of Win Server 2003 that has SQL built in.

Mike..

Submitted by smoreman on 1 August 2008 - 1:22am.

Novell have a hard act to follow with creating a Netware replacement, and the bar is set high. I feal that a great deal of excellent work is being done with the OES2 product and credit for this should be considered with each of the above comments.

So... Reading between the lines of this thread.

We are people that have many years of experience installing and configuring Netware. We were looking for OES2/L to be a one to one swap replacement for Netware. Because of this we have number of expectations of what we will find when we first install OES2/L. For me some of these expectations were: A single guided installation process, no fuss NSS volume creation and quick access to console based admin tools. Education and experience counted much toward negating these initial expectations, but in no way has it taken away the desire that these expectations be met at some stage!
The issue at hand is that the initial experience someone has with installing and configuring a product is such an important one. Get this correct and the battle for winning the hart of the installer is half over. Example First time I installed SLES10; The install and config felt like silk, and that’s with me never having installed Linux before!! I'm looking for OES2 to follow this example

Submitted by DaveHowe on 5 August 2008 - 7:18am.

I agree about reiser - its potentially a better filesystem, but the author's attitude hasn't earned him any friends in the kernel community (and having half the kernel team actively hating you isn't good when you are dependent on them to not break your modules). That the repair and recovery tools available for it are poor and unreliable, and the author currently occupying a room in a "federal hotel" are both symptomatic :)

However, EVMS while newer than LVM2, is (in my opinion of course, you apparently disagree) significantly better in a lot of areas, not least in that you can "adopt" existing non-managed volumes without wiping and starting over - not a bad thing when you have existing boxes which you wish to extend into new storage without rebuilding from scratch.

what it comes down to is that almost any distro manager makes decisions regarding which programs will be defaults, which supported (but not default) and which are not supported at all. as far as I know, on sled 10 / oes 2, you get lvm2 (not original hp style lvm) in addition to evms, and ext3 (my usual choice) in addition to reiser - these are available (if not default) choices for an admin when setting up a system, so if you WANT ext3 on lvm2, its a valid choice to make during your design phase.

Submitted by Anonymous on 11 August 2008 - 4:22am.

Hmm. yeah, I hadn't noticed that limitation as I like EVMS (I am an old unix admin, having come up the SLES route via HPUX, so while I am happy and comfortable with lvm I am also bugged by its limitations, and saw EVMS as a breath of fresh air.

That is an issue - why should you *need* a VM at all to use nss volumes? its not like you even have such a beast on netware, and NSS is native to that platform these days.

http://evms.sourceforge.net/install/kernel.html#bd... seems to allow you to add a nss+evms partition into an existing kernel-controlled non-VM device, but I really can't advise patching production kernels to unbreak "features" novell have introduced.I get the feeling the issue is that novell are making calls directly to the EVMS code to add segments to the volumes dynamically, thus saving themselves programming work porting the novell partition management code into the new os....

Submitted by dschaldemcs on 30 March 2009 - 4:43pm.

Like many others I have had my shares of frustrations with working with SLES 10 SP1 (soon going to SP2) I have done a great number of installs with several versions of NetWare (I have been using NetWare for the past 13 years) however I understood the need to move onto Linux so as to keep up with the changes at Novell. It took awhile but I have finally learned how to use EVMS right from the start of the installation, there have been improvements with that function in SLES 10, and I have found that NSS volumes work very well for most products (except VMware, NSS volumes are not easily loaded by VMware), iPrint, has for the most part been steady, and has the file structures itself, I did have some unique issues with using the client to connect to a pure SLES environment as compared to having a mix of NW and SLES boxes. Put for the most part I have moved past those issues. I have been working with SLES for about three years now (started with SLES 8) and though there are still issues I am finding that an install and configuration can be accomplished quite quickly. I do agree that Novell needs to improve upon it's documentation and tightening up the integration of NW products to those that are running on SLES now. I would be happy to share my experiences with SLES 10 SP 1 if anyone needed further assistance.