How to tell which tasks are setup in Scheduler ??

[itr0754]

I just inherited the responsibility for two Novell 6.5 servers. I am mostly a UNIX/Windows guy. I want to tell what is running on a scheduled basis on the servers. I know the cron.nlm module is active and I found a crontab file on /sys/etc. I am familiar with the Unix cron and identifying this file was easy.

However, how do I know what's running on "scheduler"?? If I log on to the Remote Manager (web console) I can go to the "Schedule Tasks" tab and see that there is nothing underneath where it reads "Currently Scheduled Console Commands" nor "Inactive Scheduled Commands". Is this sufficient to say that nothing is running with "scheduler" ??

This should be a piece of cake for you experienced Novell guys. Many thanks for the help.

 

[goombawaho]

See if CRON is loaded - it can schedule events just like it does in UNIX. Go to the Novell command line and type:

"modules cron" and then ENTER If loaded, it will be shown on the next line and the version of it etc. If blank, not running.

If it's not running, I don't think there's another way that something is scheduled other than what you looked at.

 

[marvhuffaker]

Not too many people I know run anything regularly on a schedule. It's just not usually necessary. So it doesn't surprise me that you can't find anything there.

There are OTHER system services that may run on their own schedule, but not part of CRON. For example, the Compression engine runs at Midnight by default. NDS Processes have their own intervals for running stuff.



Marvin Huffaker, MCNE

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[itr0754]

Cool !! thanks for the info. I checked and cron is running. The previous admin has a DSREPAIR -RC running every night under cron. I don't see the point in running a DSREPAIR daily but I'll have to check and see if there's a reason. Also, I'm using BrightStor (which I truly, deeply hate) to backup these servers but it is hanging halfway during the backup. The DSREPAIR runs at the same time as the backup. Do you think it has something to do with the hang ??

 

[goombawaho]

It's possible there is a connection. Can you get the log from the Brighstor backup and post the text from the time when the error is happening?? I've dealt with Brightstor for many years and if you're running version 11.0, it's pretty stable and reliable if configured properly. If you want to get into that more deeply, I can help you with some settings both to Brightstor and Netware to maximize backup speed and reliability.

For now, I would REM the dsrepair in the CRONTAB file to see if it "magically" fixes the backup hang.

 

[marvhuffaker]

The DSREPAIR -RC is NOT running a repair. the -RC flag only takes a copy of NDS and makes a backup of it. That's actually not a bad idea, usually when you need a backup, you don't have it.

Since this process probably takes 10 seconds or less, it's doubtful that it's causing issues.


Marvin Huffaker, MCNE

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[goombawaho]

Missed the -RC. Let's concentrate on that backup log file for hints about the problem.