Hello, everybody, and thatnks for the replies!
My original question was:
> Could anyone help with the following problem: How to boot a
> diskless workstation from a particular IP address. This question I suppose
> reduces to "how to specify the boot server's IP address in the prom monitor
> of a sparc station?" The openboot we have is Rel. 2.9 v.5 (92/11/04).
>
The essence of all answers was: it is impossible to define a workstation's
IP address and the address of its boot server (and the default router's IP)
using system's openboot PROM. The system should discover it's own IP address
using RARP (implies there's a RARP server running on the subnet) and after
that it will flood boot request over the subnet.
The reason why I asked was because I needed a few SPARCstations 5 and
SPARCclassics with removed hard disks to boot from a boot server in another
IP subnetwork. It turns out that such a thing is only possible if:
1. There's a RARP server on the client's subnet (can be implemented on the
router)
2. The router is configured to forward broadcasts (concerns boot requests) to
a particular host (boot server) in another subnet. This function can also be
implemented on the router.
Special thanks to all those who replied:
Frank Pardo fpardo@tisny.com
Gregory M Polanski gmp@adc.com
Jacques Rall jacques.rall@za.eds.com
(and to all who will :)
Recommended reading:
RFC 951 (BOOTP)
UNIX Network Programming, by W. Richard
Stevens (Prentice Hall, 1990; ISBN 0-13-949876-1). Here is the entire
Introduction to Chapter 12, "Trivial File Transfer Protocol"
(recommended by Frank Pardo)
Expanded reples:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Good day,
> >
> > Could anyone help with the following problem: How to boot a
> > diskless workstation from a particular IP address. This question I suppose
> > reduces to "how to specify the boot server's IP address in the prom monitor
> > of a sparc station?" The openboot we have is Rel. 2.9 v.5 (92/11/04).
> >
> >
> > TIA,
> >
> > Igor V. Alekseev
> >
> > Yaroslavl Network Center
> >
> >
>
>
> It's not possible. At the time the diskless WS boots up, it doesn't have
> any software as fancy as IP running, so it doesn't know what an IP
> address is. It only knows that it has a network card. It sends out a
> broadcast query, "Is there a boot server on the network?" (Actually, "on
> this Ethernet segment...") After one positive reply is received, the
> diskless WS ignores any later ones, and boots from the machine that sent
> the first reply.
>
> This is all documented somewhere in a couple of RFCs, but I don't have
> the ID numbers...
>
>
>
> --
> Frank Pardo <fpardo@tisny.com>
> Transaction Information Systems
> New York City
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > > Could anyone help with the following problem: How to boot a
> > > > diskless workstation from a particular IP address. This question I
suppose
> > > > reduces to "how to specify the boot server's IP address in the prom
monitor
> > > > of a sparc station?" The openboot we have is Rel. 2.9 v.5 (92/11/04).
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > TIA,
> > > >
> > > > Igor V. Alekseev
> > > >
> > > > Yaroslavl Network Center
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > It's not possible. At the time the diskless WS boots up, it doesn't have
> > > any software as fancy as IP running, so it doesn't know what an IP
> > > address is. It only knows that it has a network card. It sends out a
> > > broadcast query, "Is there a boot server on the network?" (Actually, "on
> > > this Ethernet segment...") After one positive reply is received, the
> > > diskless WS ignores any later ones, and boots from the machine that sent
> > > the first reply.
> >
> > Dear Frank,
> >
> > Thanks for the reply, however, there's something I still don't understand
> > about it: you (and other people replied) point out that nothing fancier than
> > Ethernet driver is running - but the system uses tftp to download kernel
> > image from a server which runs over UDP/IP, or am I missing something? What
> > do you say?
> >
> >
> > Thanks again,
> >
> > Igor
> >
>
> Dear Igor,
>
> Using UDP to implement TFTP is *not* obligatory, as I learned from a
> very good book entitled "UNIX Network Programming", by W. Richard
> Stevens (Prentice Hall, 1990; ISBN 0-13-949876-1). Here is the entire
> Introduction to Chapter 12, "Trivial File Transfer Protocol":
>
> File transfer is an important part of any network. In this
> chapter we develop a client and server implementation of the
> Internet Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP). This program
> is specified by RFC 783 [Sollins 1981]. Although its
> specification calls for it to be implemented using UDP, a
> cooperating client and server pair can be implemented using
> almost any desired protocol. A complete implementation of a
> TFTP client and server is shown at the end of this chapter.
>
> TFTP is a simple method of transferring files between two
> systems. It was designed to be small and easy to implement.
> It is much smaller than the Internet File Transfer Protocol
> (FTP) and does not provide many of the features that FTP
> provides (directory listings, user authentication, etc.).
> The only service provided by TFTP is the ability to send and
> receive files between a client process and a server process.
> TFTP can be used to bootstrap a workstation on a LAN, since
> it is simple enough to implement in read-only memory. A
> protocol to do this is given in RFC 906 [Finlayson 1984b]
> and RFC 951 [Croft and Gilmore 1985].
>
> The protocol described in RFC 951 is known as BOOTP (Bootstrap
> Protocol). I have a machine-readable copy of RFC 951 somewhere, and I'll
> give it to you if you're interested.
>
> regards,
> -fp
>
>
>
> --
> Frank Pardo <fpardo@tisny.com>
> Transaction Information Systems
> New York City
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The workstation has to be in ethers
One workstation has to be a boot server.
boot -as -net
on the diskless not should cause to go on the net and
ask questions about booting.
The boots server needs to be on the same subnet as the
diskless client since broadcast packets usually do not pass
through routers.
greg
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On the server you want to boot from add:
>
> /etc/ethers:
> 8:0:20:2:80:30 pluto
>
> /etc/inet/hosts:
> 123.123.123.123 pluto # client
>
> The booting system - pluto - will find it automatically over the
> network with RARP.
>
> ----------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks all,
Igor V. Alekseev
Yaroslavl Network Center, Information systems expert.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:11:44 CDT