Nekochan Net

I'm using an Apple Airport WLAN to connect my SGI systems to my home network. Most things seem to be fine, e.g. all computers can telnet to each other, file transfer via NFS works, Xnest shows remote X sessions and so on … well, let's say life was good.

Then a few days ago I thought I'm going to reinstall my Octane system. A network installation was the method of choice. Well, I updated the required files in the etc folder, loaded the installation media on the O2 and tried to boot into fx.64 from the command monitor.

But there I was stuck, because somehow the connection - or transfer - stops working.

After calling something like this:

I get the following response from the bootp on the O2 (10.0.1.120)

And that's it … at least for ca. 3 minutes, before an error message informs me, that the Octane is


After some fiddling I tracked the cause of the error down to my WLAN network. If I connect the two machines directly via crossover ethernet cable, the bootfile is loaded, executed and I'm right in fx - as expected.

So the question is, did anyone stumble over such an issue with bootp/tftp in combination with the Apple Airport WLAN and knows how to configure the basestations in the way that they simply transfer all packages instead of blocking some of them?

I have configured the SGI system to get their IP addresses via DHCP, they have reserved addresses, so the O2 is always at 10.0.1.120 and the Octane is always 10.0.1.121 (based on their MAC addresses). A simple ping from the command monitor to the O2 works flawlessly, so I hope that the basic network configuration should be fine. Even a tftp connection and transfer (get) from the O2 to my Mac works fine.

Any help appreciated.

_________________


Person A: "I'm going to hack the Internet."
Person B: "Which one?"
Person A: (dramatic pause) "ALL of them!"

You need to turn of your DHCP server while the O2 is acting as bootp server.
DHCP and bootp uses the same protocol so they will interfere with each other.
When your Octane send the request both your O2 bootp service and your DHCP server will answer the request.


//Harry

_________________
Mein Führer, I can walk!

Thanks a lot for the hint. I'll give it a try this weekend when I have some more time to reconfigure the Airport stations.

Just from a quick look at my current Airport setup there seems to be no obvious method to disable DHCP in a WLAN setup operated in WDS mode (wireless distribution system). So I guess I take the patient route, backup my WLAN config and try a new setup on the weekend that allows me to disable DHCP temporarily.

_________________


Person A: "I'm going to hack the Internet."
Person B: "Which one?"
Person A: (dramatic pause) "ALL of them!"