I can't back up my Netware clients.

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A. Marie Duplessis posted the following (17 Aug 1999): I've seen this numerous times, and have done it successfully. The fact that manual backups work, but savegrp's issued from the server do not, is the name/password authentication. [snip] I know this sounds silly, but has worked over and over again throughout all versions. Outdated as it is, Technical Bulletin #80 provided by Legato, still holds true.

Joseph Oritz has emailed me (4 April 2000) with instructions on how to do this from the UNIX server:

First, while you can't do it from the Admin GUI on a Unix server, you CAN do it by using the nsradmin utility from the Networker Unix server. This is character based and does not add the "invisible" character to the password, which is what causes the problem in the first place. Consequently it is also inaccurate to state that you must perform this operation from the Netware client. I've used this method repeatedly with Networker versions from 5.1 to 5.5.2 on Solaris and HP-UX servers. This is applicable only to Unix based Networker server.

While from my own experience, one important clue is that the client must be set to use TCPIP instead of IPX/SPX (the default setting) to talk to the non-Novell server.

Charles Tilbury (26 April) emailed to me with further troubleshooting tips:

Firstly, compression is evil on NetWare 3 servers. Don't use it, unless you like seeing your NetWare servers running at 100% cpu utilisation whilst they are backing up (I've never met a Novell admin who does like this yet!). Secondly, the latest Legato software for NetWare (4.15) actually is now "Tested & Approved" by Novell, at least for NetWare 4 and NetWare 5. The last version that was tested and approved was 4.12. The bulletins for these are available on the Novell solutions search WWW site.