NovaNET first came to my attention when a client was spammed and we decided to see what the package was like. So our reply of send docs, prices and sample resulted in an evaluation copy arriving, which I duly tested.
It is basically NT software ported to Linux by people who don't really understand Linux and it shows very badly.
Novanet claims to run on Linux, MS NT4/9x/2000/Dos and Novell Netware 4x/5x. I was unable to confirm any of these options.
Firstly, the Linux instructions are incomplete and very unclear. You need to install in a window under X, otherwise the screen becomes impossible to follow with ANSI code scattering the boxes everywhere. You also need to keep in mind, that to exit, you ESCAPE - repeatedly, and when it comes to adding hosts to the list, well - you insert. This is not obvious anywhere.
Novanet was a complete DUD in my books. To add extra hosts, you have to re-install the software. You also have to install the server first, otherwise the clients insist on becoming the server and running the database.
The first major problem was that it only installed on RedHat server and clients on my network. The install program refused to run on my Caldera OL1.3 box, so that meant that 28Gb of files would not ben looked at by NovaNet.
The next major problem is that Novanet fail to find any SCSI tape devices. Either on the RH6.0 server, or the Netware 4.11 server. The advice to recompile the sgm22.o module was followed, but this failed to resolve the problem with a pile of unresolved symbols. Hmm, obviously not ported with any my versions of linux in mind.
This is a problem for NovaNet, the box claims it will run on RH 5.2 & 6.x, but it didn't. It also failed to find a SCSI tape drive that other software has no trouble finding. This was a critical failure and brought evaluation to a stop.
At this stage, 12/4/2000, I would not recommend Novanet to any clients.