Welcome back. We return again this week to continue our coverage of the Novell console commands. I've gotten a bit of feedback from some of the older Administrators as to the fact that any Administrator worth his salt should know these basic functions. I agree. These articles are more specifically designed for newer administrators who are only used to the Nwadmin tool and never even use console! It seems almost hard to believe, but I was on a contract recently in St. Louis and we were in on a weekend to upgrade some ancient disks to larger volumes. The Administrator who did the day to day work on the network didn't even know how to set-up the file system for using Long File names or Macintosh, much less the common shell commands!

Anyway, enough with the 'In my day' speech. On with the console commands!

GRANT

The Grant command is used to set file permissions to specified users and groups. (Sort of like cacls in Windows NT.)

    grant (option) (path) USER / GROUP {user/group}

 R(read) = grant read access
 W(write) = grant write access
 C(create) = grant create access
 D(delete) = grant delete access
 S(search) = grant search access
 M(modify) = grant modify access
 A(all) = grant all access
 NO RIGHTS = grant no access

HOLDON

The holdon command is used to put set any files that you're accessing into a 'read-only' state for any other users that attempt to access it.

    holdon

The command needs no arguments as its holds are files that you are currently working in.

HOLDOFF

The holdoff command disables the effect of the holdon command and allows users access to the 'hold' files again. (Don't forget to holdoff files when you're done using them. This has been a common issue that I've seen in the past - especially in the case of multiple administrators that do not communicate often.)

LISTDIR

Listdir is used to view the subdirectories of a specified directory. This may seem somewhat pointless, but it can be used with the /R argument to retrieve data for migrating between servers.

    listdir {path} {options}

 /S(subdirectories) = View recursive subdirectories
 /R(rights) = Views the user and group rights of directories
 /A(all) = View all directory information

LOGIN

Use Login in user login scripts to attach to other Novell servers (aside from the default server). This command is common in larger networks where there may be several separate novell server groups.

   login (server)/(user)

LOGOUT

Logout is the termination of the above login command. Use this to disconnect from a given server resource.

    logout (server)

MAP

Map is the other most common login script command. This command is used to map network drives and to view current network mappings.

    map (drive) (path)

NCOPY

Ncopy is used to copy files both locally and on network drives. Ncopy can also be used to copy Macintosh files on Novell.

    ncopy (path) TO (Drive / path)

Well, that's it for this week. Enjoy trying out these commands. Next time we'll get a little more complicated when we cover such interesting commands as NDIR and NPRINT.

• Novell Console Commands, A quick tutorial (Part 1)
• Novell Console Commands, A quick tutorial (Part 3)
• Novell Console Commands, A quick tutorial (Part 4)