Hi guys,

Living and working in third world, where there're still a plethora of Novell 3.12 in operation, including the old beast at my work place.

I have managed to finally set (through VMPlayer) working copies of PCLinuxOS and DSL, and they have been able to talk nice with existing Win2003 AD.

But, I can not count myself a success until I can connect necssary users to the old beast, which are still inoperation due to legacy software (created with Clipper).

Have googled till gaga, no result, and it seems that nobody here ever asked Novell questions, except about SUSE.

I know this first questions is a ramble, but can't help meself, brains addled from too much staring at monitor.

I know, and has been advised that it would be easiest if I re-compile the legacy software with Clip, and convert the 3.12 to Linux, any flavor. And I am going to start another thread with that exact topic

But, please, just to satisfy my geek curiosity, let this thread develop to it's conclusion with either a 'CAN' or 'CAN NOT' ending ?

Thanks guys.

3.12 - wow. They didn't introduce TCP/IP until 4.x right?

If you're getting the Novell to make nice with Windows you might want to see if doing Samba on Linux (designed to make Linux deal with Windows Domains) will help you. That is to say if you can't find info on how to work Novell with Linux natively perhaps you can create a hybrid setup where you have Novell thinking your Linux IS Windows and use Samba and other utilities to get the Windows functionality you need in Linux.

By the way - Novell makes Suse Linux - maybe they have some (old) info on their site?

Actually thinking about lack of TCP/IP made me do a Google search for the terms "IPX" and "Linux" (no quotes). This pulled up quite few hits including the one below that talks about Novell:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/IPX-HOWTO.html

Haven't used it so do so at your own risk.

The IPX support is still available in latest kernel, I hardly believe some distro has it enabled though.

As noted I didn't say it worked but that I had found it.

As to latest Distros: If he is using 3.18 Novell he may have access to ancient distro of Linux. I still have at least one system running RH 7.3 here and have seen people mentioning RH 6 (not RHEL 6) .

I even have an old copy of Caldera with Wabi that ran on 486 systems.

Well, it may be possible with a modern distro, too. All one has to do is to compile the kernel with IPX support and I see at least Gentoo has ipx-utils in portage (License is Caldera). I think it's all one needs to get it going.

Jlightner,

Got to the same page amongst many. And in the process of following it, but, please be patient with me, since, in Linux I am still a genuine noob.

Judging from scarcity of info / instruction about this matter, this (although not earthshaking) could be of benefit to others, who might still be in the same boat, ie. still using a legacy Novell 3.12 in operation, and might encourage them to 'upgrade' to a more modern OS, WITHOUT necessarily upgrading hardwware as is wont to be demanded by the other famous OS.

Again, being a noob, where can I post my testing and result process in Linuxquestions ?

Again, I am hoping to produce at least 2 how-to article (or a blog would be better ? what do you think ?), one of connecting Linux to Novell 3.12 in one network, and the other on converting old, but still in use Clipper base program with Clip, to be able to be used within a Linux network.

The third how-to / blog that might be possible is conversion story from Novell 3.12 network to Linux network.

Even if it helps only 1 person later on, I really feel it would be of benefit.

Emerson,

Grin.

Believe it or not, that is still way too advanced for me :
1. I have still yet to compile a kernel.
2. I don't know who to look for 'IPX support' to be included with the compile.
3. As it said in the tag, I only have PCLinuxOS and DSL on VMPlayer. I have not yet install either one on a machine, and looking at your answer, if I had, they are not the best distro to use. Instead I would need Gentoo ? I have heard of Caldera, but have not read extensively on it. I will do so soonest. This is a gem of information. I really thank you.

Please don't be bored with this noob's effort.

Just a quick note of progress :

From http://www.europa3.com/users/fjherna...evo400c-4.html :

'...used to have some links here to URLs where you could download ISO images of Caldera Openlinux but because of the recently problems with SCO and linux, ALL the ISOs have dissapeared from the Net; at this moment I do not know of any URL where you can get them....'

Hmmmmmmmmm

nibung

I honestly believe there are Linux distros ready to use with Novell without building your own kernel. I'm 99.999% sure stock Debian will do all you need. And it certainly is not the only one. Good luck.

For howtos you can post in the Linux Tutorials under the Main Menu here. Of course it is always appropriate to put solutions in the thread itself. That way if someone later does a Google search (or a search on this site) they may find what you did.