Lewis' Blog Tales from the trenches of information technology

20Apr/120

Running RConsoleJ on OS/2

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This article of mine first appeared on the Novell Cool Solutions site in 2004. As Novell has migrated much of the original content to their newer wiki format, and has still left some behind, my own searching took me some time to find it. So, I am reprinting the article here, with a link to the original article (working as of today).

Consider this a .1 update to the original, with references to the excellent OpenJDK 1.6 port we now have available for OS/2.

I often need to run RConJ to administer not only my own servers, but those of my clients. As a die-hard OS/2 user (now using Serenity Systems' eComStation), I found it most inconvenient that I would have to find a Windows machine from which to run RConJ simply to enter a few commands at the server console (and while VNC for NetWare comes in handy, it's not quite as fast as RConJ for text mode administration). The native Remocon for OS/2 and the DOS RConsole utilities are fine, but require an IPX connection, which isn't of much use without IPX on the wire.

I came across Eric Duncan's excellent article here at Cool Solutions Running RConsoleJ on Linux, and it got me thinking that if the utility could run on Linux, then it should run on OS/2, as we have had current Java implementations for many years, now.

Basically, all that's required is to pass com.novell.application.securerconsolej.RConsoleJApplication to the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) after setting up some path information. To make things more portable, I've copied the ConsoleOne installation from the server down to my local drive (ConsoleOne itself will actually start under OS/2, but it is not possible to browse eDirectory or log in, as several platform-specific modules are required and not available under OS/2).

My current implementation looks like this, in the form of a .cmd file, named appropriately, RCONJ.CMD:

@echo off
if "%JAVA_HOME%"=="" set JAVA_HOME=C:\JAVA160
set RCONJ=C:\NETWARE\mgmt\ConsoleOne\1.2
set PATH=%PATH%;%RCONJ%\help\en\novell_rconsole;
SET RCONJPATH=%RCONJ%\lib\slp-sp.zip
SET RCONJPATH=%RCONJPATH%;%RCONJ%\help
SET RCONJPATH=%RCONJPATH%;%RCONJ%\ConsoleOneExt\nssl1.2_exp.jar
SET RCONJPATH=%RCONJPATH%;%RCONJ%\resources\rconsolej_resources.jar
SET RCONJPATH=%RCONJPATH%;%RCONJ%\lib\rconsolej.jar
SET RCONJPATH=%RCONJPATH%;%RCONJ%\jre\lib\rt.jar
SET RCONJPATH=%RCONJPATH%;%RCONJ%\jre\lib\Help.jar
SET RCONJPATH=%RCONJPATH%;%RCONJ%\ConsoleOneExt\jh.jar
SET RCONJPATH=%RCONJPATH%;%RCONJ%\ConsoleOneExt\swing.jar
SET RCONJPATH=%RCONJPATH%;%RCONJ%\ConsoleOneExt\jgl3.1.0.jar
SET RCONJPATH=%RCONJPATH%;%RCONJ%\ConsoleOneExt\njclv2.jar
SET RCONJPATH=%RCONJPATH%;%RCONJ%\ConsoleOneExt\jndi.jar
%JAVA_HOME%\bin\java -cp %RCONJPATH% 
com.novell.application.securerconsolej.RConsoleJApplication
SET RCONJPATH=
SET RCONJ=
SET JAVA_HOME=

Note that I'm using OpenJDK 1.6.0b24 for this, though I have also successfully modified the script to use Golden Code's 1.4.1 and Innotek's 1.4.2 Java implementations. Each flavor of Java seems to handle certain things in a slightly different manner than the rest, and for RconJ, 1.6.0 is my favorite.

To make the above script work for you, simply follow these steps:

  1. From the server (or from a Win32 box), copy the \mgmt subdirectory structure under your OS/2 station's \NETWARE directory.
  2. Copy the above script to \NETWARE\mgmt\ConsoleOne\1.2\RCONJ.CMD.
  3. Edit the JAVA_HOME variable statement on line 2, if necessary (e.g., if you have several different Java versions installed).
  4. Edit the RCONJ variable statement on line 3, if necessary (e.g., if \NETWARE\mgmt resides on a different drive).

That should do it!

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