NetWare Commands

Any of the commonly used DOS commands, like DIR, DEL, REN, CD or MD give the same result in NetWare as they do in DOS. However, these commands may not work the way they are supposed to because of trustee rights and file attributes. For instance, you cannot see the contents of a file for which you do not have the Read right. A DIR command may tell you that a directory is empty, but the fact may be that you do not have the File Scan right in that directory.

Rights and attributes are not the only reasons for the failure of DOS commands to perform their desired tasks. For instance, if you specify the server and the volume name with the COPY command of DOS, it will not work.

Consider the directory structure given in Figure.

Directory Structure

Directory Structure

If you want to copy a file SALEPKGE.BAT from the directory PROG of the volume VOL1 to the directory LIB of VOL2, then the command

C0PYV0Ll:PR0G\SALEPKGE.BATV0L2:LIB

will result in an error message being displayed.

You will encounter the same problem with all the other DOS commands because DOS does not support the concept of volumes. In such situations, where the use of the volume name is imperative, you have to use the equivalent commands provided by NetWare. These commands not only replace their DOS counterparts, but are more powerful and versatile. In case you do not know how to use a particular command, NetWare provides help for all commands through the HELP utility, which can be invoked by typing HELP at the NetWare prompt. Note that the NetWare commands possess a lot of options. Therefore, the slash (/) before an option and back slash (\) in path names can be used to avoid confusion although using the slash in path names is permitted.

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