/etc/bootparams

[Len Evens]

We recently encountered the following problem which was solved for us by
Avi Freedman of Temple University. We found suddenly that we could not
boot clients of a Sun 3/260S running OS 4.0.3. The source of the problem
was that many months ago we had changed our /etc/hosts table so that the
machine names were given by complete internet symbolic addresses, e.g.
sname.lnet.univ.edu

Our /etc/bootparams file, however, stil used just the raw machine name,
e.g.
cname	root=sname:/export/root/cname\
	swap=sname:/export/swap/cname

We had not in fact rebooted the clients during this time, so we were
unaware of the problem. When we did try to reboot, the process failed, and
even though we suspected that the bootparams file might be invovlved we
did not see the cause until Avi Freedman pointed it out. (He had
apparently suffered for over a month before pinpointing it.) When we
corrected the /etc/bootparams file to use the complete symbolic internet
addresses, e.g.,

cname.lnet.univ.edu	root=sname.lnet.univ.edu:/export/root/cname\
			swap=sname.lnet.univ.edu:/export/swap/cname

the problem disappeared.

This problem will predictably arise for people who have been running
independent networks which they later link up with internet.

Leonard Evens                      len at math.nwu.edu
Department of Mathematics 
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL 60208
708-491-5537