Cabletron Systems SFCS-200BX User Manual

Section 6.5 needs to be performed only if your
SCP fails to boot from its FLASH.

Each SCP on a Cabletron switch comes with its hardware address (Ethernet
MAC address) burned in from the factory, but it does not come preconfigured
with an IP address. Any time that the switch is turned on, the SCP attempts to
boot from its FLASH memory. 

If an SCP can not boot from its FLASH (e.g., the FLASH has recently been ini-
tialized or the switch software image in the FLASH is corrupt), it attempts to
locate a bootp server on its Ethernet interface. 

The SCP broadcasts its Ethernet MAC address in a bootp datagram. Bootp
servers on the network that receive that broadcast look up that MAC address
in their bootptab file. If they find an entry for that MAC address, they broad-
cast a reply to the SCP that contains a pointer to a switch software image file
residing on the bootp server. 

When the SCP sees the bootp reply, it initiates a tftp session with the bootp
server using the path and filename returned in the datagram from the server.

If the process described above is to happen, you need to provide the bootp
server with the SCP’s Ethernet MAC address and the path to the switch soft-
ware image. 

Before the bootp server will work, you must add or uncomment the following
line in /etc/inetd.conf:

bootps dgram udp wait root /etc/bootpd -d4 /etc/bootptab

with the bootpd and the bootptab files in the /etc directory. Also, the fol-
lowing line must appear in /etc/services:

bootp          67/udp          bootps