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From: donp@na.excelan.com (don provan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.novell
Subject: Re: Server Name / Syscon
Keywords: period servername
Message-ID: <2558@excelan.COM>
Date: 2 Jan 91 17:56:02 GMT
References: <903@ra.MsState.Edu>
Sender: news@excelan.COM
Reply-To: donp@novell.com (don provan)
Organization: Novell, Inc., San Jose, California
Lines: 22

In article <903@ra.MsState.Edu> wcc1@ra.MsState.Edu (Bill Chapman) writes:
>I was told that Netware 3.xx manuals say that a period may not be part of
>a server name, but we have no 3.xx users on campus.  It does appear that
>the new name has something to do with the problem, since that is all we
>changed.  We had no errors with the original name.

From "NetWare 386 System Administration" manual, June 1990 edition,
page 98:

	The name can have as many as 47 characters, but only 10 will
	show in any of the system messages.  Do not use spaces or any
	of the following characters:
			" * + , \ / | ; : = < > ? [ ] .

It's unlikely that they'd add this restriction just for 3.xx, so i
assume it's merely documenting a previously existing (though possibly
undocumented) restriction.  Consequently, i recommend simply avoiding
these characters in your server names even though you have no 3.xx
servers.  Within Novell, we use dash (i.e., "-" ) where you use dot.
I've seen others use underbar.
					don provan
					donp@novell.com