ehrlich@shire.cs.psu.edu (Daniel Ehrlich) (04/04/89)
We recently installed a Sun 4/280 data ceneter server with six diskless Sun 3/[56]0 clients. All machines are running SunOS 4.0.1 plus the fixes available from UUNET, especially the resolver based shared libc. The Sun4 has a two ethernet net interfaces. The clients are on the ethernet connected to ie0 [128.118.7.1]. The second interface ie1 [128.118.6.32] is connected to the department's main ethernet. The problem we are seeing is as follows: 1) A diskless client will be booted and gets its IP address and boot parameters from the Sun4. 2) Tftp succesfully loads the boot code. 3) Boot stops with a message like: Requesting ethernet address for 128.118.6.32 4) At this point the client will hang for ever. The problem seems to be with either the resolver routines and/or the version of the name server (bind 4.8 no patches) that we are running. The file /etc/resolv.conf contains: domain theory.cs.psu.edu nameserver 128.118.6.32 nameserver 128.118.6.30 nameserver 128.118.1.33 The name server entry for the Sun4 is: omega in a 128.118.6.32 in a 128.118.7.1 in hinfo sun4/280 sunos4 in wks 128.118.6.32 tcp smtp ftp telnet in wks 128.118.7.1 tcp smtp ftp telnet in mx 5 omega omega.cs.psu.edu. in cname omega mailhost in cname omega loghost in cname omega Here is the name server entry for a typical client: alonzo in a 128.118.7.2 in hinfo sun3/60 sunos4 in wks 128.118.7.2 tcp ftp telnet in mx 5 omega alonzo.cs.psu.edu. in cname alonzo If the first name server entry in resolv.conf is changed from 128.118.6.32 to 128.118.7.1 all is well. We tried changing the first entry to 127.0.0.1 which also works. The question I have is, "If a name server request comes in on 128.118.7.1 and the requested host has two address, in this case 128.118.7.1 and 128.118.6.32, why did the name server not return the address that is on the same subnet that the request came in on?" The work around we settled on was to use the localhost interface address as the first nameserver entry. As an aside. Does anyone know how to determine the ethernet address of the second ethernet interface on a Sun? I couldn't locate any useful information in the manuals and as the address doesn't get printed out at boot time I would prefer not to have to take the Sun4 down to pull the board and look. Thanks in advance. Dan Ehrlich <ehrlich@shire.cs.psu.edu> The Pennsylvania State University Department of Computer Science University Park, PA 16802