Novell NetWare 3.12 Patches

Novell have recently released a new patch kit for NetWare 3.12. 312PTD.EXE (available from file area 37 of the Insight BBS/web site or from Novell’s own Support web site) differs from the previous release of the NetWare 3.12 patch kit (312PTC.EXE) in that one patch module has been removed.

Novell had released a patch called NTBIOFIX.NLM, which was to overcome issues with NetBIOS broadcast storms. The patch was introduced in 312PT7.EXE (released 22/4/96) and was then subsequently removed in 312PT9.EXE (released 19/8/96) as it was found to cause spurious high network bandwidth and CPU utilisation problems.

When Novell released 312PTC.EXE in February (5/2/98), they inadvertently re-included NTBIOFIX.NLM in the patch kit, and then subsequently removed it again from 312PTD.EXE.

It has been found however that if 312PTD.EXE is installed onto a server that has previously had 312PTC.EXE installed, the installation process for 312PTD.EXE will NOT remove NTBIOFIX.NLM from the patches directory on the server. The following action is therefore recommended.

If the server is up and running and cannot be downed for maintenance within a reasonable timescale, get access to the server console, and UNLOAD NTBIOFIX (possibly also add a line to AUTOEXEC.NCF to do this automatically should the server be restarted before the patch file is deleted from the server).

When it is convenient to do so, down the server, and at the DOS prompt, delete NTBIOFIX.NLM from the PATCHES\312PTC directory that will be found below the server root directory (usually C:\SERVER.312).

Note that if installing 312PTD.EXE onto a newly configured server, the above steps will not be required, as it is only the installation of 312PTC.EXE that creates the need for corrective action.

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