Installing support pack 6a for NW 5.0

[yellowdawg]

Sorry if this sems detailed but you need to also know my background as well as my question.

I recently started a new job for a company thas is running NW 5 on a Dell PowerEdge 2300 server. We have about 36 users. My experience is desktop and some network support, but the only server experience I have is NW 3.1 and it is limited. I have taken and passed my NW 5 CNA test. It did not seem to involve ANY maintenance aspects.

The 1st thing I did was to install ArcServe 6.6 and back up everything to a DAT tape.

***The last SP installed is SP3. I have a CD with SP6a (the lastest per Novell) and I would like to install this.
I have the instructions from Novell's site. These are somewhat(very) confusing. Is there anything in particular I should know that Novell doesn't talk about? I am terribly afraid of losing the data and not being able to restore from the tape.

Does anyone have any thoughts, suggestions, simplified advice/steps that could help? Oh yeah- How long does installing a SP take....

Thanks,
yellowdog

 

[dynamode]

I have had a lot of experience installing Novell Support Packs. I have NEVER lost data though I have had SPs die in middle of processing. So here are the rules that I follow:

1) NEVER run a support pack from a local workstation remotely!! Always run it from the file server itself!

2) Though I never LOST data I have had to restart the server when the install of the SP gets "stuck". At this point sometimes the serever doesn't load startup.ncf or autoexec.ncf and just comes to a : prompt. DON'T panic there is a TID (I can't find now) and an article in NetWare Application Notes that explain the load process. I will describe it here.

Start SERVER.exe with -NA -NS -NL

at the prompt type
STARTUP
LOADSTAGE 1
At this point SYS should automatically be mounted if not run VREPAIR, next type
LOADSTAGE 2
LOADSTAGE 3
LOADSTAGE 4
AUTOEXEC
LOADSTAGE 5

You should now have a working server and restart the SP install.

The does work though it was a worst case scenario. Most of the time if I had to restart a SP install the server just came up and I just restarted the SP install from scratch. I didn't bother with removong theoriginal SP install.

Good Luck.


Joshua Rothschild
j.rothschild@dynamode.com

 

[dynamode]

I have had a lot of experience installing Novell Support Packs. I have NEVER lost data though I have had SPs die in middle of processing. So here are the rules that I follow:

1) NEVER run a support pack from a local workstation remotely!! Always run it from the file server itself!

2) Though I never LOST data I have had to restart the server when the install of the SP gets "stuck". At this point sometimes the serever doesn't load startup.ncf or autoexec.ncf and just comes to a : prompt. DON'T panic there is a TID (I can't find now) and an article in NetWare Application Notes that explain the load process. I will describe it here.

Start SERVER.exe with -NA -NS -NL

at the prompt type
STARTUP
LOADSTAGE 1
At this point SYS should automatically be mounted if not run VREPAIR, next type
LOADSTAGE 2
LOADSTAGE 3
LOADSTAGE 4
AUTOEXEC
LOADSTAGE 5

You should now have a working server and restart the SP install.

The does work though it was a worst case scenario. Most of the time if I had to restart a SP install the server just came up and I just restarted the SP install from scratch. I didn't bother with removong the original SP install.

Good Luck.


Joshua Rothschild
j.rothschild@dynamode.com