Fund@RELAY.PROTEON.COM (01/11/90)
>I have recently seen a series of txns about ABEND: NMI Interrupt etc. >For what its worth, I have recently been plagued by these thingies, and >here are a few guesses of the cause of my problems. >We have an Olivetti M280 (PC/AT clone) based ANW V2.15 with 2 Mbyte of >RAM, a 40 and 80 MByte hard disk attached. Initally, we used a Novell >NE1000 as the one and only network card on the. >We then set about adding in a second network card, which was to connect >to the "campus wide" ethernet (in the computer Centre only, as yet). Re >NETGEN-ed the system, and booted OK. The server fell flat on its back >within 15 minutes, so we undid all we had done. >Quite another issue, the 80 MByte hard disk chose to "lose" 57 blocks, >but was not thoughful enough to let Netware know about this. Dead >server. Then 512K bytes of the 2 Mbytes in the server went iffy. >The short of it is that because of a series of (independent??) faults, I >ended up playing with the server "off line" in a much reduced state. I >managed to restore the info on the duff hard disk. Server booted OK, no >problems. Then, in a fit of enthusiasm, I again added in the two >ethernet cards. File server booted OK, but as soon as the FIRST user >tried to log in, down went the server. >Eventually, back up at 2 MBytes of RAM, things went better, but crashed >if more than a few (unknown) users tried to use the server. >All errors of the "ABEND: NMI..." or "General Protection Interrupt", >running processes MUXPRC, MUXRV4/5 and occasionally with a Parity error. >In all cases, the problems vanished if I removed the second ethernet >card, removed and VAP, OR I reduced the number of users active (me >playing the part of the users) >Methinks Netware needs lots of memory, and if it does not get enough, it >will fail ungracefully. No warning, no "Not enough memory", just "Watch >me die... See? I'm Dead!". >If this is so, then Tut tut, Novell, I expected better. How much memory >can I expect to put by for a server? Any algorithm about estimating the >memory requirements given the number of users, buffers, network cards, >directories cached/hashed etc?? >If not, then what IS going off? (Also apologies to Novell :) >Bertil Schou. I believe you are right. The worst memory hogs are the VAPS. Go with at least 3MB with no VAPS and >4MB with VAPS. Glenn Fund Internet: Fund@Relay.proteon.com Principal Research Specialist CompuServe: 75170,1060 Sanders Associates cc:Mail Fund at Proteonwebo DW Highway South Phone: (603) 885-6242 MS NHQ4-0138 Director of The Greater Boston Area Nashua, NH 03061 Novell Users Group. Co-Founder and President of the Affiliation of NetWare Users "ANU Day Is Dawning"