Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 alpha 4/15/85; site ucbvax.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!ucbvax!tcp-ip From: tcp-ip@ucbvax.ARPA Newsgroups: fa.tcp-ip Subject: tftp for bootstrap Message-ID: <8712@ucbvax.ARPA> Date: Tue, 2-Jul-85 22:53:57 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8712 Posted: Tue Jul 2 22:53:57 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 4-Jul-85 00:15:43 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.ARPA Organization: University of California at Berkeley Lines: 29 From: sun!l5!gnu@BERKELEY (John Gilmore) Sun would like to use "standard" protocols for diskless bootstrap in new products. We're looking at tftp/rarp/arp as described in RFC 906 and have run into some trouble which I hope the Internet community can shed some light on. How do you put useful information in a name that contains only alphanumeric characters? We'd like to put either the machine's internet address e.g. 192.9.1.23, or its machine type e.g. Sun-2/120, in the name, but these both use punctuation and don't work very well if run-together. It's not clear how many systems will do a tftp file transfer of an unqualified name (without any directory specified) or whether you want to put a set of boot files in the directory it would pick for that case. It's not clear whether upper and/or lower case letters are possible or preferred. [My personal preference would be a SunRPC based boot protocol, but SunRPC has not seen much use in the Internet yet, is not as "standard" as tftp, and would require people to port RPC if they wanted to boot from non-Unix machines. How big a problem are these?] [Note that the protocol and administrative setup required would also be used for booting from Sun servers, thus it must be easy to set up and explain and administer.]