worrbase

So lately I’ve been trying to get an IPX test network going between my NAS and my desktop. The idea was to make my NAS an emulated NetWare server, and then make my desktop a client using the Linux IPX tools.

IPX setup was trivial.  Getting a NetWare emulator set up is almost impossible now.

First off, the ipx.h that ships with Debian stable right now is broken. Flat out broken. I have tried incessantly to get various IPX programs to compile against it, but they always throw errors. Next quarter, when I have more time due to easy classes, I might try and figure out what’s wrong. Fact of the matter, I don’t have time now.

This problem was pretty limiting, as the only mars_nwe packages I could find were source, or (horribly broken) rpms. However, I managed to find a mars_nwe Debian package here. It installed cleanly, and started up after a bit of configuration. Right after it started up, it failed to open a critical library, libdb.so.2.

With a little apt-file magic, I found the library in the Debian repos: libdb1-compat. Great news: it was compiled against the wrong version of glibc. So no dice on Debian just yet. It refuses to compile Gentoo whatsoever because the mars_nwe Makefile chain horribly confused.

The provided mars_nwe Makefile reads a configuration file for all the options to mars_nwe (they have to be compiled in; it can’t be reconfigured later). After that, it runs the current Makefile through the C preprocessor, generates a new Makefile, and then begins the compilation process. The best part of the Makefile that it generates is that the syntax is wrong. Just wrong. Make just spits out errors everywhere. So I grabbed the Makefile.o it generated and started correcting the syntax errors and cut out the bit that generates that Makefile. Thing still won’t compile. Shelving that until after my CS project is all done.

I’ll be so happy when I’m done with that project. I’ll actually be able to work on all the projects I wanna get done this year.