[36095] in Hotline Meeting
Re: Fwd: Need SGI prom upgrade.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (mwhitson@MIT.EDU)
Sat Dec 7 01:49:14 1996
From: mwhitson@MIT.EDU
To: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Cc: mwhitson@MIT.EDU, mbarker@MIT.EDU, hotline@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 07 Dec 1996 00:24:33 EST."
<0meDyFkGgE6e1Qvpw0@mit.edu>
Date: Sat, 07 Dec 1996 01:49:06 EST
> We need to estimate the cost of fixing the proms or living with
> broken ones.
> MikeWhitson: What is the consequence of not being able to fix this
> bit?
The cost of living with the broken proms for now is minimal. Mark
Virtue and I have already created a workaround for the new bootp
server which involves turning off MTU discovery in its IP driver. It
caused us about 6 hours of headaches trying to find the problem, but
that's done with. The real concern is that it causes an obsure
dependency in our SGI boot service on an obsure Solaris IP driver
configuration option. When we next upgrade the boot server to a
different platform, who knows if this will continue to be a problem?
I'd suggest that the best course of action is to see that the bug is
fixed in newer Indy prom revisions and try to acquire machines with a
fix when new machines are bought. It's probably not necessary to go
pulling the proms from current Indys.
(Ironically, there is a bug of similar impact in the DECstation proms,
involving the tftp stage of installing (requiring a custom tftpd),
which also caused me a great deal of headache when setting up the
Solaris bootp server. It's unlikely to be fixed, but it's that kind
of interoperability problem which would be nice to avoid.)
-wrong mike
