DECNet-Ultrix 4.0 installation

[Shawn Mamros]

In article <MELLON.90Nov29233750 at fenris.pa.dec.com>, mellon at fenris.pa.dec.com
(Ted Lemon) writes:
|> !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
|> 
|> The following is probably a disgusting kludge, is definitely not
|> supported by DEC, and will probably cause both your machines to emit
|> sparks, melt their disks into useless sludge, and cause portions of
|> your network cabling to evaporate in protest.
|> 
|> It's also possible that I've forgotten something - I try to avoid
|> hacking on DECnet whenever possible.  If you choose to try the
|> instructions below, you're solely responsible for whatever cleanup
|> needs doing when the whole thing blows up in your face.
|> 
|> !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That goes double for this article here.

Now to the original posting...
In article <3016 at dali>, osyjm at cs.montana.edu (Jaye Mathisen) writes:
|>> Scenario...
|>>   DS 5000 with full set of Ultrix including DECNET...
|>>   DS3100 with RZ23, that mounts the 5000 /usr...

First of all, just so you know, that configuration (root on local disk,
/usr over the network) isn't officially supported either.  I'm not trying
to criticize your use of it, nor am I saying you shouldn't use it (mainly
because I use it here ;-)... I'm just telling you what others have told me.

Now, if you are going to be running things that way, one thing that you
need to make sure of is that each machine has a separate /var area.
If /var is a soft link to /usr/var, then you're going to have lots of
problems with DECnet and other things too.  It's best to create a separate
/var partition on each machine and have /usr/var be a soft link to /var.

As Ted pointed out, the DECnet databases for each machine (including its
identity) live in /usr/lib/dnet.  But that's actually a soft link to
/usr/var/dnet.  So, if you have separate /var partitions, you're halfway
home...

Now, as far as starting DECnet goes, I have gotten it to work in that
configuration by running ifconfig to start IP, mounting /usr and then
using ncp to start DECnet.  I'm not sure why this works in the face of
the changing Ethernet address, but I've seen it happen (at least on
ULTRIX V3.1 and V4.0 on RISC machines).  No, it's not supported, and if
it breaks in a future release you're stuck, but that goes for everything
else in here too.

-Shawn Mamros
E-mail to: mamros at crl.dec.com
Disclaimer: No, I'm not an ULTRIX developer, just another "satisfied customer"