Name server/Diskless Sun boot problems
Daniel Ehrlich
ehrlich at shire.cs.psu.edu
Tue Apr 4 12:42:06 AEST 1989
We recently installed a Sun 4/280 data ceneter server with six diskless
Sun 3/[56]0 clients. All machines are running SunOS 4.0.1 plus the fixes
available from UUNET, especially the resolver based shared libc. The Sun4
has a two ethernet net interfaces. The clients are on the ethernet
connected to ie0 [128.118.7.1]. The second interface ie1 [128.118.6.32]
is connected to the department's main ethernet. The problem we are seeing
is as follows:
1) A diskless client will be booted and gets its IP address
and boot parameters from the Sun4.
2) Tftp succesfully loads the boot code.
3) Boot stops with a message like:
Requesting ethernet address for 128.118.6.32
4) At this point the client will hang for ever.
The problem seems to be with either the resolver routines and/or the
version of the name server (bind 4.8 no patches) that we are running.
The file /etc/resolv.conf contains:
domain theory.cs.psu.edu
nameserver 128.118.6.32
nameserver 128.118.6.30
nameserver 128.118.1.33
The name server entry for the Sun4 is:
omega in a 128.118.6.32
in a 128.118.7.1
in hinfo sun4/280 sunos4
in wks 128.118.6.32 tcp smtp ftp telnet
in wks 128.118.7.1 tcp smtp ftp telnet
in mx 5 omega
omega.cs.psu.edu. in cname omega
mailhost in cname omega
loghost in cname omega
Here is the name server entry for a typical client:
alonzo in a 128.118.7.2
in hinfo sun3/60 sunos4
in wks 128.118.7.2 tcp ftp telnet
in mx 5 omega
alonzo.cs.psu.edu. in cname alonzo
If the first name server entry in resolv.conf is changed from 128.118.6.32
to 128.118.7.1 all is well. We tried changing the first entry to
127.0.0.1 which also works. The question I have is, "If a name server
request comes in on 128.118.7.1 and the requested host has two address, in
this case 128.118.7.1 and 128.118.6.32, why did the name server not return
the address that is on the same subnet that the request came in on?" The
work around we settled on was to use the localhost interface address as
the first nameserver entry.
As an aside. Does anyone know how to determine the ethernet address of
the second ethernet interface on a Sun? I couldn't locate any useful
information in the manuals and as the address doesn't get printed out at
boot time I would prefer not to have to take the Sun4 down to pull the
board and look.
Thanks in advance.
Dan Ehrlich <ehrlich at shire.cs.psu.edu>
The Pennsylvania State University
Department of Computer Science
University Park, PA 16802
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