Troubleshooting AppleTalk - Internetworking Troubleshooting - page 218

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.