On 20 Jul 2006, at 11:28, Chuck Swiger wrote:

> John D. Baker wrote:
> [ ... ]
>> I could get the real machine put together.  (For some weird reason,
>> "Internet connection sharing" starts bootpd with the undocumented "-P"
>> switch.  It must mean "promiscuous" or "permissive" because it will
>> hand out IP addresses to whoever asks, without regard to the contents
>> of its NetInfo "/machines" database.)  The configuration being
>> incomplete, the boot process failed.
>
> MacOS X supports something called Rendezvous or ZeroConf and Bonjour, 
> which can be used for network configuration and service location even 
> in the event that no DHCP server is available, or even if the network 
> isn't using IP at all, but AppleTalk, or NetBIOS/NetBEUI, or something 
> wacky like that.
>
> However, if the network has been configured by a human admin via DHCP 
> or whatever (AppleTalk, NetInfo, YP/NIS, etc), those settings will 
> take priority over the auto-assigned 169.254/16 addresses ZeroConf 
> uses.

Correct.  I'm well familiar with 169.254/16 scheme.  In my case, I
have static IPs assigned on the inside network.  When Internet sharing
is turned on on the iMac, it self-assigns an IP alias of "192.168.2.1"
to its ethernet interface and starts handing out 192.168.2/24 addresses
to anyone that asks.  My static IPs are in a different network.

Rogue BOOTP/DHCP servers are all kinds of evil.  And why should NAT
("Internet sharing") be so tightly coupled to BOOTP/DHCP?  Can you see
why I'm anxious to get a REAL NAT/router/firewall in place? ;-)  But 
this
has drifted from the issue of MacOS X rarpd not responding to my SS10's
RARP requests...

John D. Baker                            NetBSD     Darwin/MacOS X
http://mylinuxisp(dot)com/(tilde)jdbaker/     OpenBSD            FreeBSD
BSD.  It just sits there and _works_.
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