mab@j.cc.purdue.edu (Mike Brown) (10/12/89)
I'm preparing to install a Kinetics KFP4 configured for K-Star routing on a subnet that doesn't have a Unix host to run atalkad. The Kbox is currently on a subnet with an atalkad, but I'm trying to configure the Kbox entirely from a Mac to see how painful life will be on subnets without atalkad. (It looks pretty bleak so far, hence this note.) FYI, net map below. I can easily configure the Kbox from a Mac to the point where I can telnet from the Mac to internet hosts both on and off of the subnet on the ethernet side of the Kbox. But the Kbox and Mac don't know about other zones or Kboxes, just their own private world. And CAP applications, like lwsrv, don't connect with the AppleTalk net. When I tickle atalkad, it tells the Kbox about the rest of the world and all is well. We then see the other zones and LaserWriter traffic starts coming through the Kbox again. Skull sessions with local and Kinetics people have suggested that atalkad may be more critical than I thought. I had hoped that I could boot a Kbox with atalkad and have it propagate its routing tables to the new Kbox on the subnet that doesn't have a Unix host to run atalkad. That way, I could boot the new Kbox from a Mac and it would then get spoon-fed from a Kbox that learned about the world from atalkad. But alas, even if the Kbox would work that way (perhaps it will?), our internet routers won't pass EtherTalk RTMP packets because they're not IP-encapsulated. So now the customary questions and plea for help... Has anyone done this successfully? How? Is the requirement that atalkad be on the same subnet as the Kbox a limitation in the Kbox PROMs, downloaded K-Star software, or atalkad? If it's an atalkad limitation, we could make atalkad smarter so it could boot Kboxes on other subnets. But we don't have sources to the PROMs or K-Star. Is there an undocumented option I can use to make the well-connected Kbox IP-encapsulate RTMP packets and send them to the ignorant Kbox? It occurs to me that I don't really need a Unix host on the subnet. What I really need is something running atalkad. Could be a PC or Mac or something else with an ethernet adapter. Has anyone ported atalkad to a micro? If so, where can I get the port? If I can't find a ready-made atalkad port, I'll consider porting it to a PC. In this case, I'd probably roll in a BOOTP server as well. (That makes sense in our environment, but perhaps not yours.) I'd probably use FTP Software's PC/TCP development kit unless I find another vehicle better suited to the task. Anyone want to make recommendations on alternatives that may make this port easier? Any other reasonable alternatives I ought to consider? I've even considered some unreasonable ones, like booting the Kbox on one net with atalkad, then moving it to the other net. But that won't work because the Kbox's K-Star routing tables aren't in nonvolatile RAM, to say nothing of possible network confusion caused by this subterfuge. The partial network map: Campus +----------------- Backbone -------------------+ | Routers | Ethernet | Ethernet | ---+--------+----+------+-----+----+- ---+--------+----+---- | | | | | | | Kbox Novell PC ... PC Kbox Unix & | Server | atalkad | | | LocalTalk | LocalTalk -+-+---+-----+- -+-+---+-----+- | | | | | | Mac ... Mac Mac ... Mac -- Mike Brown, Network Systems Programmer Internet: mab@cc.purdue.edu Purdue University Computing Center Bitnet: xmab@purccvm Mathematical Sciences Building Phone: (317) 494-1787 West Lafayette, IN 47907-2003 Fax: (317) 494-0566
farrell@EREBUS.STANFORD.EDU (Phil Farrell) (10/12/89)
Mike Brown asked for help figuring how to boot a Kinetics FastPath running K-STAR and load it with routing information when he doesn't have a UNIX host on the same IP subnet to run the atalkad daemon. He even states > Is the requirement that atalkad be on the same subnet as the Kbox a > limitation in the Kbox PROMs, downloaded K-Star software, or atalkad? Well, based on my experience, there is no such limitation. Here at Stanford, we have many subnets of a class A net, with FastPaths on all of them that boot from a single atalkad daemon on one UNIX system. We just specify the IP address of the atalkad host with the FastPath Manager and the FastPath happily connects across the subnets to the host. -Phil Farrell, Computer Systems Manager Stanford University School of Earth Sciences farrell@erebus.stanford.edu