Problems revision 302408
1# $FreeBSD: stable/11/libexec/bootpd/Problems 50476 1999-08-28 00:22:10Z peter $ 2 3Common problems and ways to work around them: 4 5Bootpd complains: "bind: Address already in use" and fails to start. 6 You are already running something that has bound the 7 BOOTP listening port number. Check /etc/inetd.conf or 8 the equivalent for a bootp line (or in startup files). 9 10Bootpd complains that it "can not get IP addr for HOSTNAME" 11 12 If the entry is a "dummy" (not a real host) used only for 13 reference by other entries, put '.' in front of the name. 14 15 If the entry is for a real client and the IP address for 16 the client can not be found using gethostbyname(), specify 17 the IP address for the client using numeric form. 18 19Bootpd takes a long time to finish parsing the bootptab file: 20 21 Excessive startup time is usually caused by waiting for 22 timeouts on failed DNS lookup operations. If this is the 23 problem, find the client names for which DNS lookup fails 24 and change the bootptab to specify the IP addresses for 25 those clients using numeric form. 26 27 When bootptab entries do not specify an ip address, bootpd 28 attempts to lookup the tagname as a host name to find the 29 IP address. To suppress this default action, either make 30 the entry a "dummy" or specify its IP numeric address. 31 32 If your DNS lookups work but are just slow, consider either 33 running bootpd on the same machine as the DNS server or 34 running a caching DNS server on the host running bootpd. 35 36My huge bootptab file causes startup time to be so long that clients 37give up waiting for a reply. 38 39 Truly huge bootptab files make "inetd" mode impractical. 40 Start bootpd in "standalone" mode when the server boots. 41 42 Another possibility is to run one bootpd on each network 43 segment so each one can have a smaller bootptab. Only one 44 instance of bootpd may run on one server, so you would need 45 to use a different server for each network segment. 46 47My bootp clients are given responses with a boot file name that is 48not a fully specified path. 49 50 Make sure the TFTP directory or home directory tags are set: 51 :td=/tftpboot: (or) 52 :hd=/usr/boot: (for example) 53 54My PC clients running Sun's PC-NFS Pro v1.1 fail to receive 55acceptable responses from the bootp server. 56 57 These clients send a request with the DHCP "message length" 58 option and the (new) BOOTP "broadcast flag" both set. 59 The bootp server (on SunOS) will send a fragmented reply 60 unless you override the length with :ms=1024: (or less). 61 The "broadcast flag" is not yet supported, but there is 62 a simple work-around, just add :ra=255.255.255.255: 63 for any clients that need their reply broadcasted. 64 You may need to use a differnet broadcast address. 65 (Thanks to Ivan Auger <ivan.auger@wadsworth.org>) 66 67