I am having difficulty using a cdrom to upgrade Netware 3.12 to 3.2. I think it may be a "Duhhh" error since I'm not very knowledgeable on Netware.

I have been running a 3.12 server at home for years. I want to upgrade it to 3.2. Since the 3.2 upgrade comes on a cdrom, and I have no cdrom on that machine, I decided to install a vanilla 3.12 on an unused IBM PS/2 model 95 that has a cdrom, to keep things simple. I already had a 49mb DOS partition, so I created a 220mb Netware partition and installed 3.12. I can boot it by using a boot manager to boot DOS, which in turn launches the server. It works and I can log clients onto the server.

The IBM scsi cdrom is accessible from DOS as E:, IF the server isn't brought up... but if I allow autoexec.bat to bring up the server and then bring it back down to a DOS prompt, I no longer have access to the cdrom.

According to the 3.2 instructions, if DOS supports the cdrom, then all I need do is:
Load Install
>Product Options
><Insert key>
>E:32ENH
(where 32ENH is the directory on the cdrom where the upgrade's PINSTALL.NLM resides).

But Netware just immediately tells me it cannot load E:32ENH\PINSTALL.

If I take a different tack and try to mount the cdrom under Netware, the mount fails... issuing:
LOAD CDROM
CD DEVICE LIST
shows me the cdrom is recognized as device 1 with vol label 32PACK but is not mounted;
issuing:
"CD MOUNT 1" or "CD MOUNT 32PACK"
causes a lot of activity, but then a message about duplicate entries in the directory and the mount fails.

Can anyone clue me as to what I'm doing wrong?

Hiya Wayne,
Let me give it a shot for you.

First do you have the current, or most current patches on the 3.12 server for cdroms? I believe it is cdup5a.exe from novells website.

I noticed that the first issues of 3.12 had a great many problems with cdrom's. It is good that you have a scsi cdrom because novell does not like anything else.

As for loading E. You must remember that there is no E just A in Novell 3.x. You must put in the volume name and then the subdirectories.

There are three commands for loading the cdrom drive, not just load cdrom. Please install the cdup5a before doing this. Read the cdup5a.txt file on this because I am a little rusty on 3.x

Type the following 3 commands -
Load nwpa
Load nwpaload
Load cdrom

This should work. If not eMail me directly and put cdrom netware issue in the subject line.

See ya,
Sully