[1275] in linux-net channel archive
Re: Solution for dosemu disconnecting during ipx/novell sessions.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Raul Miller)
Sat Oct 28 04:50:55 1995
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 95 22:44 EDT
From: Raul Miller <rdm@tad.micro.umn.edu>
To: greg@wind.rmcc.com
CC: linux-net@vger.rutgers.edu, linux-msdos@vger.rutgers.edu
In-reply-to: <199510271708.MAA21651@wind.rmcc.com> (greg@wind.rmcc.com)
The problem is that the novell session disconnects during periods
of inactivity. The IPX documentation that comes with dosemu
alludes to the fact that other's have experienced this as well. We
have futzed with the packet driver solution but we have had
difficulty with failed connections to the Novell server. Using
kernel level IPX has resulted in almost flawless connections. In
addition the speed of the kernel solution seems to be better than
the packet driver.
I am just wondering if anyone has any clues for solving this problem?
As the dosemu docs say this smells suspiciously like some sort of
watchdog or keep-alive functionality is missing from the kernel ipx
networking or in the dosemu code. I suspect that something this
simple would have probably been fixed by this time however.
It is almost that simple, but not quite.
Hints:
If you have multiple dos sessions, with multiple novell sessions open
between the linux box and the novell server, they time out
independently.
ipx is normally a dos tsr, rather than a linux kernel service.
netx is a dos tsr, but it's not handling this situation.
I'd guess that this timeout handling stuff is on a per-session basis.
Potential cures:
(1) put something into the kernel which is informed enough of novell
structures that it can form a reasonable transaction with the server
every five minutes or so.
(2) write a dos tsr that does something analogous.
I suspect that (1) would be more robust -- dos tsrs tend to be flakey.
Note that it doesn't matter much what the transaction is -- I have a
habit of doing a dir on a network directory (or loading some random
file) every 5-10 minutes when I'm doing something in a dos session and
of course that works fine. It would be beautiful if we coud emulate
whatever the standard ipx does, but I don't think that's necessary.
Probably the only real issue is that you want the code to be
relatively small and concise.
I've not looked at the kernel ipx code, and I don't have the expertise
to write good tsr code for dos, so this is about as far as I go.
--
Raul
