* A network interface monitor for NetWare
Whoever said that there are too few third party utilities, applications and services for NetWare these days must be daft. Oh, wait a minute – that was me! I just keep hearing about new software, or new versions of long established software, that are either specific to NetWare (i.e., it only runs on or against a NetWare server) or is primarily for NetWare. A couple of weeks ago we visited Hungary to find new utilities, today we’re in the Czech Republic.
Among the “things Czech” that might not be familiar to you is ROLETOsoft, a software company established in 1992 with a vision “…to create and provide clever software solutions that really help.” Can’t argue with that.
One of those clever solutions, the company’s best known in fact, is NETMON https://www.roletosoft.com/products/netmon.shtml. This is a network interface monitor, a tool to monitor the traffic on a single network interface card in your server (you can, of course, monitor each NIC in turn). There is no remote client portion as everything takes place on the server. It’s so effective that Novell’s own technical services people use the tool and have been known to send a time-limited version out to customers experiencing trouble as a diagnostic aid to solving the problem.
In fact, many people believe that this is a Novell tool and is not available commercially. It is available; it’s available today and it’s been available for quite a while. As the reader who reminded me about NETMON said, “I found their NETMON.NLM tool to be indispensable. I would use the packet capture feature all of the time in order to get LAN traffic from server’s point of view.” (Thanks Chris!)
While you’re visiting the ROLETOsoft Web site (and you should), also check out its File Commander utility, which allows you to do file manipulation from the server console. As the blurb for it says, “It allows [users] to copy, move, delete, rename files or directories, find and salvage existing or deleted files, purge deleted files. It also allows [users] to view or edit files, it provides volume/directory statistics, it shows BINDERY or NDS objects and their properties/attributes.” Bindery objects? That shows you how long this tool has been around – but it works with all versions of NetWare up through 6.5.
Also, while you’re at the site, grab a free copy of RINGING.NLM. This is a module that does nothing but rings (like a telephone) on the server. As the description says, “This is kind of funny stuff but can also be used in batch/script files to inform administrator with noisy acoustic signal that something unusual has happened on the server.”
There are lots of good things still available for your NetWare network, evidently. But if you know of some that I haven’t mentioned recently – remind me!
