IPX Networking

Please refer to the DP4 Installation Manual for Novell (Novell.chm or Novell.hlp on the DP4 CD ROM) for information on installing DP4 on a Novell Network. Unfortunately that manual is somewhat out of date, and we have not had time to update it, or extract the still useful information into this section. Here are a few notes on setting up Windows clients for a Novell server, as that subject is not covered.

When setting up DP4 networking for Windows and IPX/SPX, please remember that only the Novell Client is supported, not the Microsoft client for Netware. This is installed using a special Novell setup program, and not by using the Control Panel.
The only combinations we now test with IPX protocol is IPXMGR.NLM running on Novell 3.x and 4.x, with ipxw.w32 running on Windows 95 or NT4. We do not officially support Novell 5.x, though we now know from our users that DP4 runs OK on it. We do not actively support the old IPX/SPX components for MS-DOS and 16 bit Windows, though support is available on demand. We have only done cursory tests on Windows 98, and the software appears to work but Customers have reported reliability problems with this configuration.

Setting up DP4 networking using ipxw.w32 (or the 16 bit ipxw.exe) is fairly similar to the TCPW.W32 setup. You can have an [spx_servers] section in the DP4 configuration file similar to the [tcpip_servers] section. The entries in this section are identical in purpose - they map the generated names for the various server numbers into network addresses. However the values to the right of the dp4serverXX entries are numbers of the form network.node.socket, so you need to know the address of your Novell server in this form.

This can be found by running nlist server /b on a workstation. This gives the network and node part of the address. The socket number is selected by IPXMGR and defaults to 16384, but is configurable with the -spx_socket N command tail on IPXMGR.NLM. Thus typical entries in the DP4 configuration file might be:

[startup] 1 = ipxw.w32 -server 1 [spx_servers] dp4server01=3.1.16384

You shouldn't need any command tails on the IPXMGR.NLM. By default it will try and use socket 16384. If in doubt you can use the "spx_socket n" command tail to force a particular value to be used, say n = 20000. If you do this you must change the dp4server01 entry in the DP4 configuration file accordingly.

As an alternative you can use the command tail -dp4serverNN net.node.socket.

IPX/SPX-Specific Command Tails

The information below applies only to the MS-DOS IPX/SPX programs. The command tails listed have no meaning for the Windows IPX requesters or the Novell ipxmgr

ipx2

−RETRIES n

n is the number of times to retry the IPX broadcast to locate a DP4 server (default 3). This tail is applied to IPX2

ipxmgr.exe

−RECEIVES n	n is the number of SPX receive buffers (default 100, minimum 40, max 200).
−MEMORY n	n is the amount in kbytes of conventional memory available for buffering messages (default 64kbytes, max 256 kbytes).
−USERS n	n is the maximum number of users the system is to support (default 16, max 64).
−EXTENDED	Forces IPXMGR to use only extended memory to buffer messages.

ipx2.exe and ipxmgr.exe

−SOCKET n

n is the socket number on which the DP4 server listens for address queries from requesters. The value must be different from the value used for spx_socket.