Chapter 13. Network
Installation Management
If a client machine is unable to network boot from its boot server, there
may be a problem in one or more of the following stages of the network
boot:
- Establishing network communication between the client and server
- Obtaining the boot image from the server
- Running the boot image on the client
The following steps may be used to establish network communication:
- Before initiating the network boot on the client, perform a ping test from
the client bootp menus.
- If the ping test fails, verify that the client, server, and gateway
addresses are specified correctly.
- If the addresses are correct, try to ping the server from a different
machine in the client's subnet.
- If the server can be pinged from another machine, the network adapter on
the boot client may be faulty.
- If the server cannot be pinged from another machine in the client's
subnet, there may be routing problems between the client and the server, or
else network communications on the server may be faulty. Perform network
debugging procedures to determine the source of the problem.
The following steps may be used to obtain a boot image from the server.
- If the ping test is successful, perform a network boot of the client. When
a network boot is initiated on a client, a bootp request packet is sent from
the client to the server.
The server then replies with a packet to the client. The client machine
displays the number of packets sent and received for the bootp request. If a
packet is sent from the client, but none is received, another packet will be
sent.
- If bootp packets continue to be sent but not received, the boot server
may not be responding to the request.
- From the bootp server, view the /etc/bootptab file on the server. It
should contain an entry for the client machine with the following information:
<hostname of client>
bf=<boot file>
ip=<client ip address>
ht=<network type>
sa=<boot server address>
sm=<client subnet mask>
ha=<network adapter hardware address> (required only if bootp requests are sent by broadcasting)
If an entry does not exist, either the NIM command used to set up
the current operation failed, or the machine was reset before the boot
operation could occur.
Rerun the NIM bos_inst, diag, or maint_boot operation to prepare the server
for the client boot request.
If the entry exists in /etc/bootptab, verify that the specified data is
correct. If a field contains incorrect data, the information that was used to
define the machine or network in the NIM database was probably wrong. Correct
this problem by resetting the client machine, correcting the incorrect data in
the client or network definition, retrying the NIM operation, and rebooting the
client.
- If the /etc/bootptab file is correct, verify that the inetd daemon is
running. If it is not running, start it and retry the network boot from the
client. If the inetd daemon is running, it should automatically start the
bootpd daemon when the bootp request is received at the server.
- If the bootpd daemon is not started, verify that the bootps entry in the
/etc/inetd.conf file is not commented out. If it is commented out, uncomment it
and restart inetd with the refresh -s inetd
command. Retry the network boot from the client.
- If a bootp reply is still not received at the client, manually start the
bootpd daemon in debug mode:
- Comment out the bootps entry from the /etc/bootptab file on the server.
- Stop all running bootpd processes.
- Restart inetd using the refresh -s inetd command.
- Start bootpd from the command line using the /usr/sbin/bootpd -s -d
-d -d command.
- Retry to network boot from the client. If no output is displayed from
the running bootpd command, the client bootp request is not reaching
the server. Verify that the addresses specified in the bootp menus are correct.
If they are correct, perform network debugging procedures to determine why the
packet is not reaching the server.
- If the server receives the client bootp request, then running the
bootpd command displays output matching the client data in the
/etc/bootptab file. Verify that the specified addresses are correct. This
information is sent back to the client in the bootp reply.
- If the client is still not receiving the bootp reply, perform network
debugging procedures to determine why the reply packet is not reaching the
client.
- After the client receives the bootp reply, it will use tftp to transfer
the boot image from the server.
- The number of tftp packets transferred to the client will be displayed
at the client machine.
- The boot image has been successfully retrieved at the client machine
when the LED shows 299 on rs6k-platform machines or when the bottom third of
the screen turns gray on other platforms.
- If the tftp transfer of the boot image does not complete successfully,
the client may be trying to get the wrong boot image. Verify that the client
definition in the NIM database shows the correct platform and kernel type. If
the data is incorrect, correct it, reset the client machine, rerun the NIM
operation, and reboot the client over the network.
- Verify that the /tftpboot directory on the boot server contains a link
with the client name to the correct boot image. If the link does not exist,
reset the client machine, rerun the NIM operation, and reboot the client over
the network.
- If the link with the client name is pointing to the correct boot image
and the tftp transfer of the boot image does not complete successfully, the
boot image may be corrupted.
Recreate the boot image by performing a NIM check operation with the force
flag on the SPOT. If the client is not an rs6k-platform machine, also make sure
the client has the latest version of the firmware installed.
After the client machine has successfully received the boot image from the
server, the most common errors encountered are hangs with the LED showing 608,
611, or 613. Some machines may not have LED displays. Debugging such problems
on these machines will require using debug-enabled boot images.
Attempting to retrieve the client.info file with tftp. Note that a flashing
608 indicates multiple attempt(s) to retrieve the client_info file are
occurring.
The /etc/exports file either does not have the correct permissions for the
client to mount /usr or does not have any entry for /usr.
The system is unable to set up the routing tables.
13.2 Error 611 - Network
Error