Environment
Novell Client 2 SP3 for Windows
Situation
When mapping a drive using the "OU" eDirectory attribute, (e.g. MAP ROOT L:=%OU/VOL1:SHARED), the drive mapping will fail.
If the "Department" attribute is populated for the user, the drive mapping map will complete successfully. However, if the "Department" filed is blank the drive mapping will use the DEFAULT_SERVER and will attempt to map a drive to this server. But if the DEFAULT_SERVER is an authentication-only server (e.g. Linux server with eDirectory, but no OES or NCP/NSS volume), the drive mapping will always uses the authentication server, resulting in a "ghost mapping" which is unusable.
This problem does not exist on Novell Client 4.91
Resolution
Workaround:
Populate the "Department" field on the user objects.
Cause
When the drive mapping executes, an attempt is made to read an attribute on a non existent volume on the primary identity server. In response, eDirectory incorrectly reports a success instead of a failure.
Because this was successful, the Client next tries to get volume number of the (non-existent) volume, which fails as expected. But, since the earlier call to get the volume number succeeded, the drive mapping completes, resulting in an invalid drive mapping.