System information

Troubleshooting AppleTalk 9-187
AppleTalk: Users Cannot Access Zones or Services
The following steps outline bringing up an interface in discovery mode:
Step 1 Bring up the interface in discovery mode (using the appletalk cable-range 0-0 interface
configuration command). When a router is in discovery mode, the router changes its
configuration to match the advertised cable range if the advertised cable range is different
from that configured on the router. The debug apple events privileged exec command
lets you know when the discovery process is complete by displaying an “operational”
message.
Step 2 After discovery is complete, and while in interface configuration mode, enter the
no appletalk discovery interface configuration command for the specific AppleTalk
interface being initialized. This saves the acquired information and forces the
configuration to be validated at port startup.
The router should not be in discovery mode for normal operation (it is recommended that
discovery mode be used only when initially configuring networks). After the initial
configuration, configure all routers for seed, or nondiscovery, mode. If you enable
AppleTalk discovery and the interface is restarted, you must have another operational
communication server or router on the directly connected network or the interface will
not start up. It is not advisable to have all communication servers and routers on a network
configured with discovery mode enabled. If all communication servers were to restart
simultaneously (for instance, after a power failure), the network would become
inaccessible until at least one communication server or router were restarted with
discovery mode disabled.
Step 3 Use the copy running-config startup-config privileged exec command to save the
acquired information to nonvolatile RAM (NVRAM).
Step 4 Verify the configuration with the show running-config privileged exec command.
Forcing an Interface Up
In certain situations, you might need to force an interface to come up even though its zone list
conflicts with that of another router on the network. You can do this by using the appletalk
ignore-verify-errors global configuration command. Usually the other router is one over which you
have no administrative control but which you know has an incorrect zone list.
The appletalk ignore-verify-errors command allows you to bypass the default behavior of an
AppleTalk interface. By default, the AppleTalk interface does not come up if its zone list conflicts
with that of its neighbors. However, you should use this command with extreme caution; bringing up
an interface with a zone list that conflicts with that of other routers can cause serious network
problems. In addition, the other router must be reconfigured at some point so that all the routers in
the internetwork agree on the zone list.
After all the AppleTalk routers on the network segment have conforming zone lists, disable the
appletalk ignore-verify-errors command using the no form of the command. For complete
information on the appletalk ignore-verify-errors global configuration command, see the
Cisco IOS Network Protocols Command Reference, Part 1.
AppleTalk: Users Cannot Access Zones or Services
Symptom: Users cannot access zones or services that appear in the Chooser. Users might or might
not be able to access services on their own network.
Table 9-2 outlines the problems that might cause this symptom and describes solutions to those
problems.