Problem with remote tape

[Jean-Francois Panisset]

Here is our setup: we have a mixed network of Sun3s, Sun4s and SGIs.
All of the SGIs are on the same subnet, with some Suns. Some
of our diskless Suns were having problems booting: they were unable
to get the proper information from the bootparams server on their
file server. I then heard that SGI bootp and rpc.bootparams daemons
could prevent diskless Suns from booting properly (it was not clear
whether this was SGIs fault or Suns). Since none of our SGIs are diskless,
I simply disabled bootp and bootparams on the SGIs: this cured the
problem for the diskless Suns.

But now, I want to install IRIX 3.3.1 on our SGIs, and only one of
these has a tape drive. So I re-enable boopt on it, I create
a /etc/ethers file so that bootp may figure out the IP address of
the machine requesting a boot file.

Call Asterix the tape-less machine and Obelix the tape-full machine.
On Asterix, I reboot, and in the EPROM monitor, I select "boot
from remote tape". I then tell it to boot from Obelix, and
I get the following error:

No server for Obelix:/dev/tape(sash.IP6)
couldn't load bootp()Obwelix:/dev/tape(sash.IP6)


Boot bootp IS running on Obelix! Obelix is running IRIX 3.3.1 (since
it has a tape, it was easy to upgrade it). It has a single ethernet,
so I am running bootp without the -f (forward through gateway) option.
In order to figure out what is happening, I added the -d option,
and here is what appeared in the SYSLOG file:

Dec 23 20:31:02 Obelix bootp[387]: starting at Sun Dec 23 20:31:02 1990
Dec 23 20:31:02 Obelix bootp[387]: 1 interfaces, forwarding is DISABLED
Dec 23 20:31:02 Obelix bootp[387]: (re)reading /usr/etc/bootptab
Dec 23 20:31:02 Obelix bootp[387]: NON-Autoreg REQ: magic=100035ec, clname=NULL
Dec 23 20:31:02 Obelix bootp[387]: replyfile /dev/tape
Dec 23 20:31:02 Obelix bootp[387]: reply ciaddr c01a3cce
Dec 23 20:31:02 Obelix bootp[387]: missing gateway address
Dec 23 20:31:07 Obelix bootp[387]: NON-Autoreg REQ: magic=100035ec, clname=NULL
Dec 23 20:31:07 Obelix bootp[387]: replyfile /dev/tape
Dec 23 20:31:07 Obelix bootp[387]: reply ciaddr c01a3cce
Dec 23 20:31:07 Obelix bootp[387]: missing gateway address
Dec 23 20:31:12 Obelix bootp[387]: NON-Autoreg REQ: magic=100035ec, clname=NULL
Dec 23 20:31:12 Obelix bootp[387]: replyfile /dev/tape
Dec 23 20:31:12 Obelix bootp[387]: reply ciaddr c01a3cce
Dec 23 20:31:12 Obelix bootp[387]: missing gateway address
Dec 23 20:31:17 Obelix bootp[387]: NON-Autoreg REQ: magic=100035ec, clname=NULL
Dec 23 20:31:17 Obelix bootp[387]: replyfile /dev/tape
Dec 23 20:31:17 Obelix bootp[387]: reply ciaddr c01a3cce
Dec 23 20:31:17 Obelix bootp[387]: missing gateway address
Dec 23 20:36:17 Obelix bootp[387]: timed out

/usr/etc/bootptab is essentially empty (since we have no diskless machines,
there is no need for any regular entries there). From the SYSLOG,
it seems that for some obscure reason, Obelix is trying to 
send the stuff through a gateway, even though Asterix is on
the same network (maybe I should add the following info:
Asterix 8:0:69:2:28:3d 132.206.41.28
Obelix 8:0:69:2:28:38  132.206.41.29

I guess I don't know what to do anymore at this point. Could the Suns
on the net be preventing this from working? Is there something
that is not properly configured? I realize the difficulty of doing
remote debugging, but hopefully somebody will have heard of a similar
problem before. Thanks in advance...

JF


-- 
Jean-Francois Panisset                    
INET: panisset at mcrcim.mcgill.ca            
      panisset at larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu
UUCP: ...!mcgill-vision!panisset