SUMMARY: changing hostid under Solaris 2.4

From: James Ashton (jaa@alfred.anu.edu.au)
Date: Tue Jun 06 1995 - 10:36:13 CDT


THE QUESTION

I've attempted to use `sethostid-simple-5.3' provided as part of the
`hid-1.3.1' package. My problem is that I'm using Solaris 2.4, i.e.
SunOS 5.4 and the sethostid module will not load.

BACKGROUND

I received the usual batch of `me too's and enquiries about what the
package does. It provides several different ways to change the hostid
(as returned by `hostid' or `sysdef -h' under Solaris 1 or 2
respectively). Hostids are typically used by commercial software
vendors to restrict the use of their programmes to certain machines.
This can be a real pain if your hostid changes (because of a hardware
repair or upgrade, etc.) so hid allows you to set the hostid to
whatever value you want.

THE SOLUTION

The documentation with `hid-1.3.1' omits to mention that, after adding
`sethostid 177' to `/etc/name_to_sysnum' it is necessary to reboot.
This solved my problem -- I guess it should have been an obvious step
to try. This documentation problem is apparently fixed in later
releases of hid which I obviously missed in my searching.

markh@wimsey.bc.ca (Mark Henderson) notes that:

>The latest version of the package is available from the following
>sites as change-sun-hostid-1.4.3.tar.gz
>
>ftp.netcom.com:/pub/he/henderso
>ftp.tatung.com:/pub/sun-info/admin-tools
>sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/sun-info/admin-tools
>ftp.wimsey.com:/pub/crypto/hostid-nvram
>src.doc.ic.ac.uk:/pub/sun/sunsite-sun-info/admin-tools

mike@eandm.co.il (Mike Dubman) provided an alternative script to do the
same job but, since a reboot solved my problems, I haven't tried it.

THE GLORY

Thanks to:

markh@wimsey.bc.ca (Mark Henderson)
cap@future.mitre.org (Craig Prall)
mike@eandm.co.il (Mike Dubman)

--
James Ashton						  System Administrator
VK1XJA					     Department of Systems Engineering
Voice +61 6 249 0681   Research School of Information Sciences and Engineering
FAX   +61 6 279 8088				Australian National University
Email James.Ashton@anu.edu.au			   Canberra ACT 0200 Australia



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