Subject: Re: netbooting 3000/400
To: Jonker, Harm <harm.jonker@eds.com>
From: Adam Sulmicki <adam@cfar.umd.edu>
List: port-alpha
Date: 05/18/1999 12:27:24
"Jonker, Harm" writes:

->> > Is tftp broken on v7.0?  I guess I could try MOP -- My 
->> vaxen need it,
->> > and so I know my configuration there works...
->> 
->> MOP works, (the file is downloaded,) but the netboot file isn't in MOP
->> format, so it bombs out.  Is there a MOP format netboot file for
->> alpha?  (assuming tftp is hopeless?)
->
->I had the same problems.
->If you dont need v7.0 firmware for a specific reason then I my solution is:
->you can go back to v6.3 firmware with MOP (firmware v6.3 images for MOP are
->available on the net), next you can netboot with bootp and tftp.

FYI. 
	I had the same problem and I had written a daemon which allows 
to 'workaround' the broken tftp and still netboot the box. 

What it basically do is listen on netork, detect bogus packets, and
send spoofed packets which pretend to have came out of the box
which is trying to netboot. Works like charm :P

I have not announced it yet, since the work by means is not finished.
What does this means is that it does the right job netbooting a box
with broken firmware, but you need manually configure the program instead
of just running it with MAC of the box you want to netboot.

The program can be found at 

	ftp://ftp.cfar.umd.edu/pub/adam/bootfix.tgz

People are welcome to take a look and send enchancements or fixes to it,
I'll not have time to look at it until the finals are over. BTW: I know
it runs on Linux, I had not tested it on NetBSD yet.

I also would welcome reports on what firmwares and on what boxes have 
broken netbooting so that I can include them in the README. For me it 
was DEC 3000/300 with v7.0 firmware.

PS: I was wondering what's status of keyboard and mouse under DEC 3000
    I have heard various report, some ppl saying it works, some that it 
    does not -- the reason that I ask was that I was considering to try to 
    fix it.

Adam