144099b7bSPaul Traina 244099b7bSPaul TrainaCommon problems and ways to work around them: 344099b7bSPaul Traina 444099b7bSPaul TrainaBootpd complains that it "can not get IP addr for HOSTNAME" 544099b7bSPaul Traina 644099b7bSPaul Traina If the entry is a "dummy" (not a real host) used only for 744099b7bSPaul Traina reference by other entries, put '.' in front of the name. 844099b7bSPaul Traina 944099b7bSPaul Traina If the entry is for a real client and the IP address for 1044099b7bSPaul Traina the client can not be found using gethostbyname(), specify 1144099b7bSPaul Traina the IP address for the client using numeric form. 1244099b7bSPaul Traina 1344099b7bSPaul TrainaBootpd takes a long time to finish parsing the bootptab file: 1444099b7bSPaul Traina 1544099b7bSPaul Traina Excessive startup time is usually caused by waiting for 1644099b7bSPaul Traina timeouts on failed DNS lookup operations. If this is the 1744099b7bSPaul Traina problem, find the client names for which DNS lookup fails 1844099b7bSPaul Traina and change the bootptab to specify the IP addresses for 1944099b7bSPaul Traina those clients using numeric form. 2044099b7bSPaul Traina 2144099b7bSPaul Traina When bootptab entries do not specify an ip address, bootpd 2244099b7bSPaul Traina attempts to lookup the tagname as a host name to find the 2344099b7bSPaul Traina IP address. To suppress this default action, either make 2444099b7bSPaul Traina the entry a "dummy" or specify its IP numeric address. 2544099b7bSPaul Traina 2644099b7bSPaul Traina If your DNS lookups work but are just slow, consider either 2744099b7bSPaul Traina running bootpd on the same machine as the DNS server or 2844099b7bSPaul Traina running a caching DNS server on the host running bootpd. 2944099b7bSPaul Traina 3044099b7bSPaul TrainaMy huge bootptab file causes startup time to be so long that clients 3144099b7bSPaul Trainagive up waiting for a reply. 3244099b7bSPaul Traina 3344099b7bSPaul Traina Truly huge bootptab files make "inetd" mode impractical. 3444099b7bSPaul Traina Start bootpd in "standalone" mode when the server boots. 3544099b7bSPaul Traina 3644099b7bSPaul Traina Another possibility is to run one bootpd on each network 3744099b7bSPaul Traina segment so each one can have a smaller bootptab. Only one 3844099b7bSPaul Traina instance of bootpd may run on one server, so you would need 3944099b7bSPaul Traina to use a different server for each network segment. 4044099b7bSPaul Traina 4144099b7bSPaul TrainaMy bootp clients are given responses with a boot file name that is 4244099b7bSPaul Trainanot a fully specified path. 4344099b7bSPaul Traina 4444099b7bSPaul Traina Make sure the TFTP directory or home directory tags are set: 4544099b7bSPaul Traina :td=/tftpboot: (or) 4644099b7bSPaul Traina :hd=/usr/boot: (for example) 4744099b7bSPaul Traina 48