Manually start a connection to the NetWare server

If you do not have an authentication entry for a NetWare server, you can manually start a connection to the server. You do this by using the Start NetWare Connection (STRNTWCNN) command. If you are using the connection for batch jobs, first read that topic for special considerations.

To start a connection to a NetWare server, do this:

1. On an iSeries™ command line, type STRNTWCNN and Press F4. (You can also start a connection by typing WRKNWSSTS at the command line and pressing Enter. Then page down to the server and type 10 (start connection).)
2. In the Server field, specify the name of the NetWare server to which you want to connect.

   You can start connections to any server within an NDS tree by using the *ANY value. You can specify *ALL to start connections to all servers within the tree you specify on this command. If multiple connections exist, operations that do not require a specific server will use the first connection that was started.

3. In the Server type field, specify either:
   • *SERVER for iSeries to determine the type of the target server

     If you specify *ANY or *ALL in the Server field, you cannot specify *SERVER here.

   • *NDS for a NetWare 4.1, NetWare 5.x, or Netware 6 server
4. Specify the name of the user. Only jobs running under this iSeries user profile can use the connection. To start a connection for another user profile, you need *USE authority to that user profile.
5. If the user profile has no authentication entry or you want to use different authentication information than the user profile contains, enter values for the rest of the fields. If the user profile has an authentication entry, that entry identifies these values:
   • The server or NDS tree
   • The user name for each server or NDS tree that you want to access
   • Optionally, the password that is used to log in to the server or tree.
   To have iSeries retrieve these values from the authentication entry, use the special value, *AUTE. If you did not set up iSeries to save passwords, specify the NetWare password.
6. In the Authorized job field:
   • If you want the connection to be available only to the current job (necessary to access the file system), use the default (*). Connections that are limited to the current job end during end job processing. Because ending connections requires communication with the server, jobs take longer to end (possibly several minutes, depending on the state of the server).
   • If you want to make the connection available to any job, change the value to *ANY. Use this value to run batch jobs and for printing to a NetWare print server when a connection cannot be started by using an authentication entry.
7. Page down to see additional parameters.
8. In the Connection type field, specify whether the connection is:
   • A normal user sign-on (*USER). Specifying *USER for the connection type establishes a connection that is similar to logging in from a NetWare client. You need a *USER connection to access files and directories on the server and to perform server administration tasks such as creating volumes or submitting console commands.
   • A connection to the NetWare Storage Management Services (SMS) NLMs (a *SAVRST connection).

     A *SAVRST connection requires that these NLMs be present on the server, either already loaded or in the server's search path:

     NetWare 5 -- SMDR.NLM, TSANDS.NLM, TSA500.NLM
     Netware 6 -- SMDR.NLM, TSANDS.NLM, TSA600.NLM
     

     The *SAVRST connection must use the same user name and password as are used to start the *USER connection.

9. You can use the Connection idle time field to do this:
   • Force a connection to remain active indefinitely. You might want to use this (along with *ANY in the Authorized job field) for batch jobs that will run later. See Details: Connections in a batch job or printing.
   • Allow the system to automatically close connections that have not been used for a specified period of time, possibly to reduce the number of active connections. This value defaults to 15 minutes.
10. Press Enter to start the connection.

If you have trouble starting the connection, see the topic on troubleshooting authentication errors.