Original post:
From: Andrew M Townsend
To: Internet:sun-managers@ra.mcs.anl.gov
Date: 4/8/98 12:56PM
Subject: Critical Bootp problem
Hi Sun Managers,
I was running the generic bootpd on a Solaris 2.5 machine. The machine crashed, and we had to move the services to a box running 2.4. We took a backup copy of /etc/bootptab from the 2.5 box, put it on the 2.4 machine and started bootpd. To my knowledge the 2.4 machine is fully patched.
Now, the bootpd dumps core about once a week. Also, many users have been loudly complaining about IP address conflicts, when their are only single entries in the bootptab for the IP and MAC addresses. We flush the network arp caches to no avail.
Additionally, our domain name is not being successfully pushed to a number of Win95 and 3.11 boxes. Instead of being able to internally "ping machine", we have to fully qualify the domain names when accessing internal boxes. This can be fixed by entering the DNS and domain information locally on the workstations, but with the 2.5 version that died, everything seemed to push down properly.
I can't find a version number for bootpd in /var/adm/messages, nor by starting bootpd with truss. However, a file on bootpd yields:
bootpd: ELF 32-bit MSB executable SPARC Version 1, dynamically linked, not stripped
The big question: Are there version differences between the versions of bootpd for Solaris 2.4 versus 2.5? How about bootptab file formats? Since we took the bootptab from a 2.5 box "back down" to the 2.4 box I'm thinking these differences are the reasons we're having so much trouble now.
Please help. Any and all advice/guidance is tremendously appreciated. I have been trying to resolve this for a couple of weeks and now things have escalated to a point where the customer is extremely unsatisfied.
Thanks for your time,
Andy Townsend
Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
Washington, DC
atownsend@doleta.gov
---Howdy,
Thanks to Joel Lee and James Ford. I'm told that bootp tables are the same regardless of the bootpd version. Bootp is still dumping core occasionally but I've exhausted the resources available to me (this list is always absolute last resort).
I did a strings on the core file and saw some typos and other errors in bootptab. So, I fixed the offending lines and restarted bootpd. The last time bootpd core dumped there were no errors reported from the bootptab, but the durned thing still crashed.
For now I can live with our current setup. I'm resolving IP conflicts on a case by case basis which is a nuisance but it's livable. I also have to check a few times a day to make sure bootpd is still running. We've ordered a flavor of Sun support and when I get my pin I'll revisit this, but for now, ever forward.
Just out of curiosity I'd be interested in hearing if any of you get IP conflicts with bootp when there are clearly not duplicate entries in the bootptab.
As always thanks to all on this list!
Andy Townsend Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration Washington, DC atownsend@doleta.gov
"The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese." (unknown) ! ! !
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:12:36 CDT