UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello,
We have an old Axil running SunOS Release 5.5.1. Recently, we updated our network, so the gateway and domain changed. Our network admin forgot (or didn't know) that we had this machine on the network, so it quietly lost its mind.

Now we are trying to add it back to the network. He brought it up in single user mode and changed a bunch of config files to match the new network configuration.

The problem is that the nic will not allow the new IP address for the local host to be assigned. Here is the error message from the boot messages:

configuring network interfaces:ifconfig: SIOCSIFADDR: hme0: Cannot assign requested address
hme0
hme0: auto-revarp failed: no RARP replies received

And, of course, subsequently the network cannot be reached.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks In Advance,
Ernie

A little hard to know whats going on without a bit more information. Such as what the configuration files were changed from and to.

I general though, for solaris, you need to check the following.

1) /etc/hostname.<id>

where <id> is the identifier for the ethernet card in the machine. There will be one of these files for each physical and logical interface defined on your system (so probably only 1 file in your case). It should contain the hostname (without domain name) of your machine.

2) /etc/hosts

should contain a line (or lines) which match the host names from the file(s) in point 1. The format of each line would (in its simplest form) be

<ip address> <hostname>


3) If you are using any other subnet mask other than a standard class A B or C the mask for the particular network needs to be present in /etc/netmasks

4) /etc/defaultrouter

should contain the IP address of your default router.

5) /etc/defaultdomain

should contain your domain name

6) There are several other files where information on the hostname and ip address are stored they are mostly not hand edited. If your machine has had its ip address only partially changed then it may well be easier to run the 'sysunconfig' command, reboot and answer all the relevant questions on boot up. I would *NOT* however suggest you do this without an experienced admin present.

Other possibly affected files include

/etc/resolv.conf
/etc/nsswitch.conf
/etc/nodename
/etc/inet/netmasks
/etc/default/init (/etc/TIMEZONE)
/etc/net/*/hosts
/etc/vfstab
/var/yp/binding/*/ypservers



The obvious command is sys-unconfig, but I cannot remember if it was there back in SunOS 5.5.1, but if the command is there the man page lists all the affected files at the end, I don't have anyhting older than Solaris 7 readily to hand.

Perderabo may be able to confirm this because I know he posted something about a different command under 5.5.1 yesterday in another thread.

Note also that sys-unconfig will reset other files, however it will make backup copies of them.

My apologies, as reborg pointed out it is sys-unconfig and not sysunconfig. Trying to confirm if it was in solaris 2.5.1

sys-unconfig is definately present in solaris 2.5.1 (SunOS 5.5.1). patch 105701-02 for this version of the OS patches /usr/sbin/sys-unconfig

Thank you both for your useful inputs. Our admin figured it out. The config file that assigns the IP address to the host had some sort of unprintable character in the IP address field, so we couldn't see it in the text editor. He merely retyped that area and saved the file again. This time it worked.

Thanks again for the replies.

This is a great resourceE

Ernie