NAME

rarpd − DARPA Reverse Address Resolution Protocol service

SYNOPSIS

/etc/rarpd if hostname

DESCRIPTION

Rarpd starts a daemon that responds to reverse-arp requests.  The daemon forks a copy of itself, and requires root privileges. 

The reverse-arp protocol is used by machines at boot time to discover their (32 bit) IP address given their (48 bit) Ethernet address.  In order for the request to be answered, a machine’s name-to-IP-address entry must exist in the /etc/hosts file and its name-to-Ethernet-address entry must exist in the /etc/ethers file.  Furthermore, the server that runs the rarpd daemon must have entries in both files.  Note that if the server machine is using the Yellow Pages service, the server’s files are ignored, and the appropriate yellow pages maps queried. 

The first argument if is the interface parameter string in the form of “name unit”, for example “ie0”.  The second argument hostname is the interface’s corresponding host name.  The if, hostname pair should be the same as the arguments passed to the ifconfig command.  As with ifconfig, rarpd must be invoked for each interface that the server wishes to support.  Therefore a gateway machine may invoke the rarpd multiple times, for example:

 /etc/rarpd ie0 krypton
 /etc/rarpd ie1 krypton-backbone

FILES

/etc/ethers
/etc/yp/domainname/ethers.byaddr.∗
/etc/yp/domainname/ethers.byname.∗
/etc/hosts
/etc/yp/domainname/hosts.byname.∗

SEE ALSO

ethers(5), hosts(5), ifconfig(8C)

Sun Release 3.2  —  Last change: 30 September 1985