Why is my bootp deamon receiving short packets? 1

[Einstein47]

In my syslog I have TONS of messages stating that my "bootpd[pid]: received short packet" and then immediately following that "last message repeated x times".

This is only happening on some of my servers, and I can't for the life of me know why it is happening, or how I can stop it - or should I concern myself with it.

Any and all advice would be appreciated. Einstein47
("If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?&quot

 

[rneve]

Hi,

There are systems in your network that are sending bootp requests (broadcast). Your system is listening to this request and trying to answer to this request, by looking in to the bootptab condfiguration (file /etc/bootptab) if there mac-address is defined. When it isn't you are getting these messages (bootpd[pid]: received short packet).

When you are not using tftp, then you comment the following line out in the /etc/inetd.conf. The system will stop listing to the bootp requests.

#bootps dgram udp wait root /usr/sbin/bootpd bootpd /etc/bootptab

You have to refresh the inetd deamon after this, to activate the change in the configutaion file.

# refresh -s inetd

Regards Richard

 

[Einstein47]

tftp - Trivial File Transfer Protocol

What is this used for? I don't have a clue. And thanks for the tip, I will comment out the line and refresh my inetd. I know that I am not using tftp for anything. I don't think anyone is. Einstein47
("If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?&quot

 

[victorv]

hi,

We can call services as telnet,ftp,smtp,nfs,ecc, user
services: they answer to explicit user requests (local or remote)

tftp, bootp, ecc, are services not well seen at the users
level, they are used from other devices as net-printers,
Xstations ecc.
I have seen them also using NIM: when a host to be
installed "calls" a NIM server, bootp answer to client and
this use tftp to download the boot image from network for
the 1st boot; after using normal NFS, the client downloads
the full image and the additional devices drivers.

If I remeber, you can see in a log file of bootp
(maby calling it in debug mode by inted), you can see
mac-address or IP address of the object that broadcasts
a bootp request.

bye