Problem loading NW 6.5 SP6 & 2 NICs in ESX

[dchunt]

I am setting up a test environment with VMWARE ESX 3.5 and need to set up a BorderManager server using NW 6.5 SP6. I have added a second NIC to the VM and can see it in NetWare. I added the second NIC in inetcfg and everything is fine EXCEPT when I boot the server, it prompts me for what SLOT (not IRQ) to load the CNEAMD driver for. What is weird is that when I configure either NIC in inetcfg, I don't have an option to specify a slot; only an IRQ and a base IO addr.

I have the private NIC set to use CNEAMD.LAN with an IRQ of 3 and an IOAddr of 300h. I have the public NIC set to use CNEAMD.LAN and an IRQ of 4 and an IOAddr of 320. When I boot the server, it loads the CNEAMD.LAN then prompts for which SLOT to use - 3 or 4. The default is 3 and if I hit enter, it loads OK. Then it prompts me for whether I want to bind another frame type. The default is 'n' and I hit OK then NetWare continues to boot. When it has finished booting, both NIC's are loaded with the correct settings and I can communicate through them. Also, even though I am loading drivers for 2 NIC's I only get prompted once for the slot and the frame type.

I have checked to make sure I don't have a second initsys.ncf file in the autoexec.ncf - I don't. I looked at the Netinfo.cfg to see if it somehow was trying to load the same NIC twice - it isn't. How can I get around NetWare asking for the 'slot' for a NIC that doesn't have an option for 'slot'?

Dan

[dchunt]

I found that if I edited sys:\etc\netinfo.cfg file and added teh 'slot=3' for the first NIC and 'slot=4' for the second NIC, that this would allow the server to boot and not prompt for a slot value. It is strange that INETCFG doesn't show a slot option for this NIC. Oh, and you have have to set netinfo.chk to a value of '0' so that NetWare will not complain about a checksum mismatch when loading the NIC's.

Dan

[jedijeff]

Is CNEAMD really that much better than the PCNTW on netware? just curious.

[dchunt]

Jeff, I don't know. I was going on the suggestions of the few other posts I could find on the forum. In theory the CNEAMD.LAN does not have as many timesync problems. What NIC do you use? I am still having timesync problems in my VM environment (VMWare 3.5 ESX).

Dan

[jedijeff]

I use pcntw...but i am thinking of moving to cneamd....i have tons of

problems with suse10 though!!!

On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 4:07 PM, dchunt <communities-emailer@vmware.com