root@smarine.UUCP (Chris Hapgood) (08/28/90)
Kevin, This is an open letter in response to your posting I received last week. It was going to be mailed, but I think it might be of general value on the net. I have been using EXCELAN LAN WORKPLACE (LWP) semi-successfully for several months at my site. The streams part from SCO was purchased with no particular hassle from SCO. The item you need is indeed the SCO Streams Runtime package. I believe that release 1.2 is the most recent version. I am running SCO XENIX 386 version 2.3.1. I will upgrade to 2.3.2 next week. In any case, here is a list of problems I have encountered with LWP and XENIX: 1. EXCELAN LWP for XENIX w/ SCO XENIX-NET cannot connect to a DOS server running an MSNET-type redirector. In fact, our servers are running LWP for DOS!!!! What a shame. Clients can attach to the XENIX server with no difficulties. The problem is with the XENIX client software. Some SCO people have told me that this config should work, but I'll be damned if I can figure it out. Once again: DOS client to XENIX server is ok, XENIX client to DOS server is not, despite SCO's claims to the contrary. 2. SCO gives instructions for boosting performance of DOS clients by changing the value of NBIOSZ. I have tried this procedure seven ways to Sunday with no luck. Every time I try, my DOS clients (running EXCELAN LWP for DOS) go to LALA land when accessing "big" files. I say "big" cuz clients can do a DIR and even access small files ok. Big files cause the clients to start beeping. Only the three-fingered salute will bring them back to life. 3. (Smaller bug) You cannot restart the network after having stopped it once. It will continuously stop itself every time you restart it. Only way to keep it working is to boot it in the configuration you want (server, all, rdr) and not fool with it. These three problems (especially #1) have really lowered my opinion of SCO, and especially EXCELAN. SCO has at least tried to help (although I'm still waiting for some promised configuration files for verification from Phil Newman at SCO, hint, hint). EXCELAN, on the other hand, has pretty much given me some lip service, told me the problem was with SCO and left it at that. It seems to me that at least the first part of my problems would be their responsibility. I do have two good things to say about LWP and XENIX-NET combo. Make it more than two. 1. Pretty good docs from Excelan. They don't seem to have changed since merger with Novell. 2. Very nice TELNET/FTP/RLOGIN/SMTP implementation as far as I can tell 3. Decent performance for many DOS clients using NETBIOS. One more prblem: XENIX-NET does not correctly report disk space re- maining to DOS clients. It includes free space on all file systems on hard drive in its value, not just space on /u filesystem. OVERALL assessment: good TELNET/FTP/RLOGIN-type value, mediocre NETBIOS value. Too bad I was counting on the NETBIOS support... Chris Hapgood Sperry Marine, Inc. 2111 Michie Drive #100 1070 Seminole Trail Charlottesville, VA 22901 Charlottesville, VA 22901 (804) 977-8345 (804) 974-2584 @Virginia.EDU:@smarine.uucp:cch0241@medusa ...!uucp!virginia!smarine!medusa!cch0241