Locating the DIB

     

You can find the DIB files in the following locations on Windows and Unix systems:

• Windows : [ drive :]\Novell\NDS\DIBFiles

• Unix : /var/nds/dib

WARNING

Because access to the DIB files on non-NetWare servers is readily available to standard utilities, such as Explorer, you need to take care when accessing the folder that is holding the DIB files.

However, many administrators often wonder where NetWare stores the DIB files. NetWare hides its DIB files in the SYS:_NETWARE directory. This is a system-protected directory that can't be accessed using standard utilities such as FILER. However, you can easily view the contents of this directory by using RConsole (which requires the Internet Packet Exchange [IPX] protocol to be enabled at the server and your workstation) as follows :

1. Use RConsole to connect to your server.

2. Press Alt+F1 to bring up the Available Options menu.

3. Select Directory Scan and enter SYS:_NETWARE as the name for the directory to scan. A list of DIB and stream files is displayed.

NOTE

You cannot use RConsoleJ to view the contents of the SYS:_NETWARE directory because it does not have the Alt+F1 hotkey feature.

Figure 3.4 shows the contents of the SYS:_NETWARE directory on a NetWare 5 server running NDS 7. On a NetWare 5 server running eDirectory or a NetWare 4 server running NDS 6, the output is similar, but the filenames are different, as noted earlier in this chapter.

TIP

From a NetWare server, you can access the SYS:_NETWARE directory by using NetBasic (included with NetWare 5.x and 6.0) or Novell Script for NetWare (shipped with NetWare 6.5):

NetWare 5. x and 6.0	NetWare 6.5
load netbasic	load nsninit
shell	nsnshell
cd _netware	cd _netware

Because these utilities allow you to delete files, you need to be careful with them, or you could damage your DS database.

Figure 3.7. A sample directory list of SYS:_NETWARE from a NetWare 5 server running NDS 7.

TIP

After you upgrade a previous version of NDS on your NetWare server to the latest version of eDirectory, the old database files are left in the SYS:_NETWARE directory. If you have any *.41 x files, the server was upgraded from NetWare 4.1x (thus NDS 6) to the current version; *.__B and *.__D files are a result of upgrading from NDS 7; and *.OLD , *.DOB , and *.DOB files are DSRepair backup files (from NDS 6 and NDS7, respectively). If you are short on disk space or want to clean house, you should consider deleting the old database files only after a successful upgrade.