Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 14:19:29 CST From: "Walter Huff" <WHUFF@uwohali.com> To: questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Problem with bootpd and/or Trumpet Winsock Message-ID: <11E9689218A@Uwohali1.Uwohali.Com>
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I have been having a problem with either the bootpd daemon or the
Trumpet Winsock program (for MS-Windows). Before the flame war about
a "mixed" environment starts let me just say that the Windows
machines are a management decision... 'nuff said.
Anyway, in an attempt to make my life somewhat easier I decided to
do all the IP address and name management on the FreeBSD box I had
set up as a name server and mail forwarder. So I started using the
bootpd daemon for IP address allocation and used the Trumpet WinSock
product on the Windows machines, specifying "bootp" as the IP
address. All seemed to work just hunky-dory.
And then I installed it on the rest of the machines. In every case
(after I got the first inevitable machine differences ironed out) it
seemed to work just fine. And then the troubles started.
The first clue was when I sat down at a machine that had worked just
perfectly not 30 minutes before, was off in the middle of a Windows
application, and got a dialog saying "BOOTP Failed. WinSock will not
load". Weird I thought, and just to check it out I exited Windows
and re-entered so that the StartUp group would be re-executed. This
time Trumpet worked just fine. I wrote it down to the odd cosmic ray
and proceeded to forget about it... for about a day.
Then I started getting problem reports from a number of users asking
what the "BOOTP Failed" message was about, or wondering why they
couldn't use the neat new network tools I had taught them about.
After a fair amount of investigation I have found the following
symtoms and/or clues:
When BOOTP fails, one of the following actions usually works:
25% of the time exiting Windows and re-entering will fix it.
25% of the time exiting Windows and hitting RESET will fix it.
25% of the time repeating the about 3-4 times will fix it.
25% of the time the PC must be shut down, the FreeBSD box
re-booted, and then the PC restarted.
Note that the last action is a sure-fire fix and I have never known
it not to work after that. Also the first time in the morning a
machine is started it virtually always works. And if a machine has
been idle for an hour or more it almost always works. Just if Windows
is exited and then re-started within the span of 15-45 minutes is it
somewhat vunerable. And there seems to be no predicting whether or
not the problem will appear. It seems to disappear, for days at a
time, only to return with a vengeance.
For those of you that are wondering, from the FreeBSD side all
appears to be normal. In EVERY case listed above the BSD box sees
the Bootp request and replys normally (or at least that's what the
debugging messages say). And yes, one of the Windows machines might
fail and one right next to it will work perfectly... and as far as
you can tell from the BSD side there's no difference!
I've posted questions about this to alt.winsock, but apparently
nobody on that usenet group uses the Bootp feature of Trumpet. My
guess is that it's a bug in the Trumpet software, but I was just
wondering if anyone out there might have encountered this or a
similar problem and might be able to help me to resolve it.
Thanks!
- Walter Huff
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