1 2Common problems and ways to work around them: 3 4Bootpd complains that it "can not get IP addr for HOSTNAME" 5 6 If the entry is a "dummy" (not a real host) used only for 7 reference by other entries, put '.' in front of the name. 8 9 If the entry is for a real client and the IP address for 10 the client can not be found using gethostbyname(), specify 11 the IP address for the client using numeric form. 12 13Bootpd takes a long time to finish parsing the bootptab file: 14 15 Excessive startup time is usually caused by waiting for 16 timeouts on failed DNS lookup operations. If this is the 17 problem, find the client names for which DNS lookup fails 18 and change the bootptab to specify the IP addresses for 19 those clients using numeric form. 20 21 When bootptab entries do not specify an ip address, bootpd 22 attempts to lookup the tagname as a host name to find the 23 IP address. To suppress this default action, either make 24 the entry a "dummy" or specify its IP numeric address. 25 26 If your DNS lookups work but are just slow, consider either 27 running bootpd on the same machine as the DNS server or 28 running a caching DNS server on the host running bootpd. 29 30My huge bootptab file causes startup time to be so long that clients 31give up waiting for a reply. 32 33 Truly huge bootptab files make "inetd" mode impractical. 34 Start bootpd in "standalone" mode when the server boots. 35 36 Another possibility is to run one bootpd on each network 37 segment so each one can have a smaller bootptab. Only one 38 instance of bootpd may run on one server, so you would need 39 to use a different server for each network segment. 40 41My bootp clients are given responses with a boot file name that is 42not a fully specified path. 43 44 Make sure the TFTP directory or home directory tags are set: 45 :td=/tftpboot: (or) 46 :hd=/usr/boot: (for example) 47 48My HP Laserjet 4 gets an error during boot: "80 service (xxxx)" 49Here is an explanation of the problem from a fellow at HP: 50 51 Date: Mon, 16 Oct 95 10:16:29 MDT 52 From: James Clough <clough@hpbs3651.boi.hp.com> 53 Subject: Re: problems bootp-2.4.3 and JetDirect 54 To: bootp@andrew.cmu.edu 55 56 > I installed bootp-2.4.3 with the DHCP-patches. 57 > All went oke, except the JetDirect cards, build in in 58 > several HP Laserjet 4's. They stopped while initialising 59 > with error message '80 service (01E0)' or 60 > '... (0009)'. The DUTH HP service support did not know 61 > what the error-message was. 62 63 This problem has surfaced here more than once--each time with a 64 different hypothesized cause and proposed fix. 65 66 The real cause of this problem is the byte alignment in the vendor 67 extensions portion of the bootp packet. Here are a few workarounds 68 that I've either used myself or heard tell of others using with 69 success: 70 71 1. Change the name of the printer. If the name in your 72 bootptab entry has an even number of characters, 73 change it to a name with an odd number of 74 characters. If it's odd, make it even. 75 76 2. Remove the logserver (lg) capability from the 77 bootptab entries for the affected printers. 78 79 3. Use the vendor sort patches posted here in June by 80 Ron Stanonik. They make bootpd sort the vendor 81 extensions into RFC numeric order. It just 82 so happens that this causes them to be aligned 83 correctly. 84 85 Really, anything that changes the byte alignment in the vendor 86 tags section of the packet can work, including removing null 87 terminators from string capabilities. 88 89 James Clough 90 -- 91 clough@boi.hp.com 92 93(Perhaps we need a "pad for alignment" option in bootpd. -gwr) 94