On Tue, 29 Jan 2002, Matthew Sell wrote:

> The machine that handles DHCP is kinda slow - so it may not be
> responding quickly enough for an address request. Sound logical? I
> probably should move that functionality to a faster machine, or use
> RARP. Does that sound like a logical next step?

It could be that the machine is slow.  You might consider running your
dhcpd with verbose debugging, just to make sure that the VAX is talking
with it.  Another point brought up by someone is the difficulty which
occasionally arises from ethernet switches not properly forwarding
BOOTP, DHCP, or RARP requests to all the ports.

If you are using a switch, and your DHCP server doesn't see a request
coming in from the VAX, then, if possible, see if you can move the VAX
and the DHCP server onto the same ethernet segment.  Either hook them up
with a strand of thin-net cable, or put them both on an ethernet hub.
If all you have 10Base-T and no access to a simple hub, then you could
also make a cross-over cable to run directly between the transceiver on
the VAX and to the NIC in your DHCP server.  There's always a half-dozen
ways to work around these sort of problems-- unfortunately, many of
them are kind of inconvenient.

You might go ahead an set a static arp entry on the system running the
DHCP server that contains the VAX'es HW ethernet address.  And be sure
that your DHCP server's entry for the VAX client is laid out like it
should be.  Here's an example of the /etc/dhcpd.conf I used on my
NetBSD/i386 1.4.2 system that ran the DHCP server:

----------------------8<---------------------------

use-host-decl-names on;
server-name "nfsserver";
option domain-name "mydomain.com";
option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.2;

subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
  next-server 192.168.1.10;
  option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
  option broadcast-address 192.168.1.255;
  option routers 192.168.1.1;
}

host vaxclient {
  hardware ethernet 08:00:2b:a1:b2:c3;
  fixed-address 192.168.1.100;
  option root-path "/export/vaxclient";
  option host-name "vaxclient";
}

----------------------8<---------------------------

> Probably a good addition for the bootloader would be added status
> messages......

The lack of messages is probably, or at least in part, due to the
relatively small space you're allowed to cram all the functionality of
bootloader into.  I forget what the exact MOP load specs are for the
MicroVAX-II and the VAXstation 2000, but I think it only guarantees
that you'll have a chunk of 64KB into which you can put fit bootloader.
I think later models expanded that to 256KB.  In practice, you can
usually throw in a lot more than the spec allows for, which is what the
VAX/Linux guys have been doing by loading the whole kernel with MOP.

Most of the useful debugging details can be deduced from what you are,
or in many cases "aren't", seeing on the server side.

-brian.