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DESCRIPTION

The only reason you're likely to encounter ND nowadays is if you have an old Sun 2 machine, like the 2/120 or 2/50. The Sun 2 PROMs can only use ND to boot over the network. (Later, the Sun 3 PROMs would use RARP and TFTP to boot over the network.)

ndbootd is a very simple ND server that only supports client reads for booting. It exports a disk that the clients consider to be /dev/ndp0 (ND public unit zero). The disk is available only to clients that are listed in /etc/ethers and have valid hostnames. (Sun 2 PROMs don't do RARP, but they do learn their IP address from the first ND response they receive from the server.)

boot1 is a file containing the mandatory first-stage network boot program, typically /usr/mdec/bootyy. The layout of the exported disk is:

• block 0: normally a Sun disklabel (but ignored by the PROM)
• blocks 1-15: the first-stage network boot program

With the -s boot2 option, ndbootd will also make a second-stage network boot program available to clients, typically /usr/mdec/netboot. When boot2 is a filename, that file is the single second-stage network boot program to be served to all clients.

When boot2 is a directory name, typically /tftpboot, ndbootd finds a client's second-stage network boot program by turning its IP address into a filename in that directory, in the same manner later Sun 3 PROMs do when TFTPing (i.e., if a client has IP address 192.168.1.10, ndbootd expects to find /tftpboot/C0A8010A.SUN2 ).

When used in this last manner with an ND-aware first-stage boot program, ndbootd serves the same purpose in the Sun 2 netboot process as tftpd(8) serves in the Sun 3 netboot process.

Any second-stage network boot program always begins at block 16 of the exported disk, regardless of the length of the first-stage network boot program.

All first- and second-stage network boot programs must have all executable headers stripped off; they must be raw binary programs.

The remaining options are:

-i interface

Only listen for ND clients on interface interface. Normally ndbootd listens for clients on the first non-loopback IP interface that is up and running.

-w windowsize

This adjusts the window size of the ND protocol. This is the number of 1-kilobyte packets that can be transmitted before waiting for an acknowledgement. Defaults to 6.

-d

Run in debug mode. Debugging output goes to standard error and the server will not fork.