Error 144 when running DSTSHIFT.NLM on NetWare 6.5 SP6

  • 3336186
  • 14-Nov-2006
  • 26-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell eDirectory 8.7.3.7 for NetWare 6.5
Novell eDirectory 8.8 for NetWare 6.5
Novell NetWare 6.5 Support Pack 6

Situation

NetWare 6.5 servers in the US and Canada need to have the Daylight Savings Time Adjustment Tool for NetWare run on them. This is due to the proposed DST change proposal before Congress that will lengthen DST time so that it will begin on the second Sunday of March 2007 and commense the first Sunday of November.
If this tool is not run on every server in those countries affected, time will be out of synch between servers which will create problems for applications that require accurate time synchronization such as GroupWise and especially eDirectory.
This tool is contained in NetWare 6.5 SP6 but is not extracted from its zip file and hence does not run automatically. It can be found in the SP6 tools directory.
You must unzip the dstshift zip file and manually copy the DSTSHIFT.NLM and DSTCFG.TXT file to the server. When running this tool to update a server's start and end for DST using the standalone SP you mayl receive a message, " ERROR 144, DSTCFG.TXT does not exist at SYS:dirname\TOOLS ".

Resolution

If the DSTCFG.TXT file does exist in the same directory as the NLM this message is being displayed because it is flagged read-only. Remove the RO attribute from the DSTCFG.TXT file and the tool should proceed to make the required change with no further issues.
This tool updates the autoexec.ncf and NetWare registry to reflect the new DST times.