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Recently I had the opportunity to do a migration from NetWare 6.0 SP5 to OES2 SP1 (x64). The only thing that stood out was the OSX clients. Thankfully OES2 SP1 reintroduced AFP after long last.

Initially things seemed fine, but soon after I ran into some of the wackiest character issues.

There were many file copy issues, naming issues, etc. So after opening an SR, multiple patches (seems some of this was working in x86 but not x64 afp/ncp), etc, and some in-depth testing from the very nice & patient Mac folks I have the following to report:

~ = Pass
` = Pass
! = Pass
@ = Pass
# = Pass
$ = Pass
% = Pass
^ = Pass
& = Pass
( ) = Pass
- = Pass
- = Pass
_ = Pass
+ = Pass
= = Pass
; = Pass
" = Pass
, = Pass
[ ] = Pass
{ } = Pass
< > = Fail
* = Fail
? = Fail
| = Fail
/ \ = Fail

The Mac itself will not let you name with . (period) or : (colon) at the start of the name. Also, the characters that fail transfer to the server in the first position also fail positioned later in the name. I realize these are slightly annoying limitations since some of the fail characters did work on NetWare, but you are going to have to live with it. This group of macfolks had no problem adjusting, and I am sure your folks won't either.

So just make sure everything is updated to the very latest, especially AFP & NCP.

Older client note - if you have older non OSX clients you will have to relax the security from the default "Diffie Hellman" (who reads that as Dunder Mifflin?) to "cleartext". Found that one out 4 weeks after the migration when they went to use that special use computer running OS8.6.x.

Reference - http://www.novell.com/documentation/oes2/file_afp_lx/?page=/documentation/oes2/file_afp_lx/data/bgd73bt.html

Remember to also check out http://forums.novell.com/novell-product-support-forums/open-enterprise-server/oes-platform-independent/oes-native-file-access/

btw, the OSX users *loved* the GW8 native OSX client vs. the GW65 client.

Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).

It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.