From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jun 15 1:42:14 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from bolero-x.rahul.net (bolero.rahul.net [192.160.13.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id BE74F14DC8 for ; Tue, 15 Jun 1999 01:42:08 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dhesi@rahul.net) Received: from q.bolero.rahul.net (bolero.rahul.net) by bolero-x.rahul.net with SMTP id AA14794 (5.67b8/IDA-1.5 for ); Tue, 15 Jun 1999 01:42:07 -0700 Message-Id: <199906150842.AA14794@bolero-x.rahul.net> Received: (qmail 14783 invoked from network); 15 Jun 1999 08:42:06 -0000 Received: from waltz.rahul.net (192.160.13.9) by bolero.rahul.net with SMTP; 15 Jun 1999 08:42:06 -0000 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: recommended procedure to set ip address and gateway? Date: Tue, 15 Jun 1999 01:42:04 -0700 From: Rahul Dhesi Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Support I configure a FreeBSD box for a customer, using IP address and gateway on my LAN. The customer will connect the machine on his own LAN. What is the recommended procedure for the customer to correctly set the host name, IP address, and gateway? When the customer puts the machine on his LAN and powers it up, we have a chicken-and-egg situation. The customer needs to see the login: prompt, log in as root, and set the IP address etc. But he might never reach the login: prompt, because the boot procedure will keep waiting for various network services and daemons (e.g., DNS, NIS, ntpdate, who knows what else). Some of these will hang for a long time because the machine's IP address and gateway is not correctly set. Booting the machine into single-user mode (with 'boot -s') leaves the root disk mounted read-only, and I see that /usr is not mounted and 'vi' is not available. Working around this and editing /etc/rc.conf is possible but too complicated to write down on a small slip of paper to be stuck to the machine before delivering it to the customer. Rahul Dhesi To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message