Hello Folks @ 3000-l,

Re: Starting a BT100 LAN Card

----------------------------------------John "Danger" Skelton writes--
Yes your NETCONTROL statement is correct, the override option disables
version checking. Sometimes when backing out an update you can get
miss-matched versions of the various parts of NS, which will generate
an error when starting NS services and stop the network from coming
up, the "override" parameter lets your bring up the network despite the
error.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Perform a :help NETCONTROL and a :help NSCONTROL.  If you notice that
the "override" option is not documented, that would be a clue that
it's use is "unsupported".  In a search of http://docs.cup.hp.com/
you will find the same is true of the on-line documentation.

Both the NSCONTROL and the NETCONTROL commands evaluate the S/W
version installed for discrepancies before starting the NS-Transport
or the NS-Services.  This is in general is a good thing and the
supported method to bring up a network on a production system.

This type of version checking is especially important within the
multi-layered networking code.  As an example their are obviously
dependencies between TCP and IP and it would be good if the correct
TCP and IP code module was present to assure parameters or messages
are passed correctly between these code procedures.

What use is the ";OVERRIDE" ?  The ";OVERRIDE" is a great tool for a
system manager to have in his/her bag of tricks and I expect it
probably is documented in most of the tools books/texts on the HP-e3k.
In a rare circumstance the HP-RC may recommend the ";OVERRIDE" as a
workaround until a software version repair can be made.

One infrequent reason I use the ";OVERRIDE" is in building patches it
is possible to seriously clobber the NS-Transport or NS-Services
versions.  In this circumstance it is handy to try to bring up the
network and copy over a known good patch and then force install it
with AUTOPAT to correct the version mess.  At this point I am working
on a test machine and if it Aborts I don't have much to loose and if
this works I avoid having to create and hand carry a tape of the
patch.  The point here is when you specify ";OVERRIDE" be prepared for
the possibility of a System Abort.

One point is it is very very important to not specify ";OVERRIDE" in
your standard production network startup job or udc.  When you
install a patch it is important to identify when you first try to
bring up the network (after hours scheduled down time) that you have
a version problem rather than when your production users start logging
on and exercising the network (9:00 A.M. Monday).

Stick that ";OVERRIDE" in your bag of tricks!

I hope this helps.

Regards,

James Hofmeister
Hewlett Packard
Worldwide Technology Network Expert Center
P.S. My Ideals are my own, not necessarily my employers.

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