Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!rice!sun-spots-request
From: mcooper%acamar.usc.edu@oberon.usc.edu (Michael A. Cooper)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Re: 4.0.1 mount problems
Keywords: Networks
Message-ID: <15543@oberon.USC.EDU>
Date: 5 Mar 89 19:29:36 GMT
References: <2276@unmvax.unm.edu>
Sender: usenet@rice.edu
Organization: USC Computing Services, Los Angeles
Lines: 18
Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
Original-Date: 25 Feb 89 02:54:04 GMT
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 7, Issue 181, message 3 of 11

We had a similiar problem.  The boot program would get downloaded, the
kernel would get load, autoconf, and then it would query the net again
(net boot) asking for it's server.  At that point several icmp destination
unreachable messages would be sent by random hosts on the ethernet.  This
would cause the kernel to crash since it couldn't mount its root and swap.

It turns out the "random hosts" had incorrectly configured their broadcast
address and/or their subnet mask.  Fixing these "random hosts" solved the
problem.

What's really weird is that when boot did a net boot query initially it
also saw icmp dest unreachable messages, but it retried its query and
eventually succeeded.  The kernel appears to only try one query and then
give up and die.

Michael A. Cooper, University Computing Services, U of Southern California
  UUCP: ...!uunet!oberon!mcooper            BITNET: mcooper@mouse
  ARPA: mcooper@oberon.USC.EDU              PHONE: (213) 743-2957