DGLInfo: Novell NetWare 3.12 and 4.1 File Servers are not Year 2000 (Y2K) Ready

NetWare 3.12 & 4.1 Not Y2K Ready
Server & client upggrade patches being developed

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Novell NetWare 3.12 & 4.1 Not Y2K Ready
by Dave Murphy
ISSN 1535-3613

Novell NetWare 3.12 and 4.1 are not year-2000 compliant based on the standard installation that ships in the retail boxes.

Novell has upgrade patches that allow these best-selling local area networking products to work beyond December 31, 1999; however, installing the upgrades on client workstations can require reconfiguring individual workstations -- a daunting task for companies with more than a handful of computers.

Even while some workstations may be Year 2000 (Y2K) compliant, many offices still use computer that require a hardware bios upgrade, in addition to software configuration.

When version 3.12 and 4.1 NetWare servers are set to December 31, 1999 23:59 (11:59 P.M.), using the "Set Time" console command, and turned off for two minutes, they lose the correct time. When turned on two minutes later, they report the time as a few minutes after midnight, January 1, 1988. The date problem also occurs if the server is left running through the date change.

Although the date & time on NetWare servers can be manually reset to the year 2000, the systems lose the correct date on subsequent restarts, such as following routine maintenance, hardware upgrades, or power outages.

Novell plans to release a beta version of the patch for NetWare 3.12 and 4.1 in a few days. The final version of the patch is expected in early 1998.

The server's patch will be relatively simple to install - a one-time, fix that takes only a few minutes to perform. And the version 4.1 patch for client workstations can be automatically distributed to each workstation using Novell's free "Novell Application Launcher" (NAL) utility program.

However, updating version 3.12 workstations can be much more difficult because NetWare 3.12 doesn't support the NAL utility. Novell is working on finding a solution to this distribution hassle.

Additional details can be found at Novell's online support site: http://www.support.novell.com/.

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updated October 22, 1997
http://dgl.com/dglinfo/1997/dg971022.html