Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Solaris Jumpstart server interference

I've been working on trying to install Solaris 10 via DVD and "boot cdrom" on a host in the lab. I've been wondering why the install keeps assigning it an IP address and hostname without me supplying one. Even after running "sys-unconfig", I was never prompted to put in a new IP address or hostname.

The problem was our Jumpstart server. We had jumpstarted this host in the past, testing some automation installs, and the server still had an entry in the ethers file. Apparently when the server starts up, it tries to be slick and configure its interfaces for you when it boots. It looks like the Jumpstart server was picking up the requests and saw it had a matching MAC address in its configuration. The Jumpstart server then passed the hostname and IP address to the server I was trying to install. After we shut down the Jumpstart server, the sys-unconfig worked as expected. I wish the "discovery of network card settings" was not the default behavior.

1 comment:

Reamer77 said...

I should add that I was using a Flash Archive install as well. I'm not sure if it would've mattered with the initial install.

However, it's still strange that sys-unconfig would never prompt me to add a new hostname or IP address while the Jumpstart server was running.