Remote Maintenance Protocol (RMP) is an HP-proprietary boot
and file transfer protocol used in early Series 700 workstations
and in the Datacommunications and Terminal Controllers (DTC/9000).
The rbootd daemon allows BOOTP servers to serve clients that
use RMP. rbootd must be run on a BOOTP server on the same subnet
as the RMP client. That is, both rbootd and bootpd must run on the same system.
The rbootd daemon translates RMP bootrequests into a BOOTP bootrequest
using the client's hardware address. rbootd then forwards the bootrequest to bootpd. bootpd can send a bootreply back to rbootd if it finds the client's boot information
in its database. Or, it can relay the bootrequest to other BOOTP
servers if it has relay information for the client in its database. rbootd translates the BOOTP bootreply back to RMP and
sends it to the client.
Figure 5-2 “BOOTP Server for RMP
Client” shows an example of an RMP bootrequest
that is sent to rbootd, which then forwards a BOOTP bootrequest for the
client to bootpd. bootpd finds the client's boot information in
its database and sends a BOOTP bootreply back to rbootd. rbootd then sends an RMP bootreply to the client.
As mentioned previously, the BOOTP bootrequest can be relayed
to other BOOTP servers. A BOOTP bootreply is sent back to the original bootpd daemon, which then sends the bootreply back to
the rbootd daemon on its local system. rbootd uses either NFS or TFTP to transfer boot files from
the remote server to its local system. (TFTP is the default file transfer
method.) rbootd then transfers bootable images to the client in the
form of RMP packets.
If TFTP is used to transfer boot files from a remote server,
the boot files must be accessible via TFTP. For more information,
see “Configuring the TFTP
Server”. There must also be temporary file
space available in /var/rbootd/C0809* on the rbootd server. Generally, at least 6 to 8 Mbytes of space
should be allowed for each BOOTP client. The temporary files are
removed automatically after a certain period of inactivity; by default,
this time period is 10 minutes. You can specify a different time
period by using the -t option when starting rbootd.
If NFS is used to transfer boot files from a remote server,
use the NFS mount command to mount the path of the boot files on
the rbootd server system. The path that is specified with
the mount command must be defined with the bf tag for the client configuration in the /etc/bootptab file. (See “Adding Client or Relay Information”.) Note
that a directory or file must be exported with the exportfs command before it can be NFS-mounted.
To start the rbootd daemon:
Set the environment variable START_RBOOTD to 1 in the file /etc/rc.config.d/netdaemons. This causes rbootd to start automatically whenever the system is
booted.
Run the rbootd startup script with the following command:
/sbin/init.d/rbootd start |
