Subject: Re: is bootpd still relevant
To: Ted Lemon <mellon@nominum.com>
From: Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@zembu.com>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 02/09/2001 12:02:24
On Wed, 10 Jan 2001, Ted Lemon wrote:

> One other big difference between bootpd and dhcpd right now is that
> bootpd uses a different mechanism for unicasting to the client -
> rather than using BPF, it stuffs an entry into the ARP cache.   Some
> old, buggy boot proms don't respond to ARPs, so they can't TFTP with
> dhcpd, but can with bootpd.   You can work around this by manually
> stuffing the ARP cache, but it's kind of evil.   People have made
> noises about contributing code to fix this, but nobody's done it yet.

Note that bootpd on NetBSD actually calls arp to handle this. Since it's
arp's job to do this anyway, it seems like a fine thing to do. :-)

strings obj.macppc/hwaddr.o |more

...
arp -d %s; arp -s %s %s temp
arp failed, exit code=0x%x
...

:-)

Take care,

Bill