NMAS Issues

[nwoliver]

I am having more and more issues with NMAS being a problem with my users logging in to my network. They either log in and get random servers with incorrect or nonexistant drive mappings or they get a message that indicates an error and if it happens again, see your administrator. Doing a search on support.novell.com narrows it down to an NMAS problem and that I should shut down NMAS on the local workstation.

Anyone else with these problems and is there a cure?
nwo

 

[LawnBoy]

I've had random problems with NMAS. My solution is to not install it on the workstations, and only install NICI.

 

[nwoliver]

Yea, that is what I thought the answer would be. There is apparently no fix, merely avoidance.

Well, I can do that too.
nwo

 

[marvhuffaker]

I disagree. What are the random problems?

Marvin

Marvin Huffaker, MCNE

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[nwoliver]

Randomly, when a user logs in, drive mappings are off. The user might get a F drive mapping to an alternative server and the login script defined drive mappings fail to happen. Typically when this happens, I set the Bad Address Cache Timeout to 0 and the Bad Server Name Cache Timeout to 0. This usually works, though not always.

Another login issue that has recently started to happen is that I have been seeing an error message occur, again randomly, when logging in, that indicates an nmas problem, declines a network login, and requires a workstation login. I will have to do a screenshot for you the next time it happens. The fix, from the Novell support site, suggests turning off nmas locally.
nwo

 

[marvhuffaker]

That's a terrible fix. NMAS gives you the ability to use Universal Passwords. What does this mean? Better password policies. More secure passwords. The ability to do user password self service and challenge/response resets of passwords.

The reason they say to turn it off is because a default configuration of Netware doesn't use Universal Password. It's something that has to be enabled and configured. When setup, it allows you to enforce EXTREMELY STRONG passwords. But since a lot of people have not configured Universal Password, they make the assumption that turning it off is a good way to make a quick fix.

However, this doesn't work in cases where Universal password is Required. IDM is another thing that needs Universal Password. I have actually been on support calls with Novell and of course, the Tech guy just wants to close the call, so 'turn of nmas' is the easy answer. But when pressed... that's not an option.

What I would like to know is if the following Client Update will resolve some of the strange NMAS problems. There are several documented fixes although I'm not sure if any are the same as yours.

http://support.novell.com/cgi-bin/search/searchtid.cgi?/2974113.htm

Also, your first paragraph - I believe that you are dealing with a non-nmas issue there. I just have a hunch..

Marvin Huffaker, MCNE

http://www.redjuju.com

 

[terry712]

are you using an ldap contextless login search ?
i agree with marv - disable nmas is very short sited

 

[andriod998]

I've also been experiencing this problem at several sites in our district. It seems like whenever something is changed that effects the machines connection to the network (whether it's the installation of software that uses the network directly or a machine crashes and doesn't logout correctly) once the machine re-starts it connects up to our server called edir-root (which is the server that holds all of our master replicas for our sites in the district) and then skips through the login script erroring on every mapped drive for the perticular local server but will still get drives mapped to other servers in our district. I found that if you let the machine sit long enough (usually 10 to 15 minutes) the problem would resolve itself however that's not really a viable option for someone that is trying to teach class. I (like others in this post) ended up removing the NMAS installations from the machines and it resolved the problem, however I dont believe this is a "solution" to the overall problem. I did install the updates Marvin provided in a previous post to several machines to see if that would work. Thus far they have not been able to reproduce the problem but it's so spuratic that it's hard to reproduce anyways.

Thanks
Andy