POLARIS NETWORK SETUP FOR SGI IRIX BOXES

Setting up SGI Irix 4.x systems for use on a particular LAN can be done in a variety of ways. The following are suggestions and hints of things to check. But these suggestions may not be the only way, or the best way, to set up your system to operate. Consult your local SGI system expert for things that may be peculiar to your system.

IMPORTANT: Whenever making a change to a system file, always make a copy of the original version of the file that was working before you began reconfiguration for the LAN.

In the following suggestions and hints, assume that your assigned fully-qualified hostname for your machine is "myhost.mf.espo.nasa.gov", and your assigned IP address is 198.120.56.25. Consult the table of assigned hostnames and IP addresses to find your actual unique values for these two items and use them. The other configuration parameters for the LAN are shared by all hosts. They are:

Moffett Field

  Netmask: 255.255.255.0
  Broadcast IP address: 192.150.34.255
  Gateway IP address: 192.150.34.100

  DNS Nameserver hosts:
    cloud1.arc.nasa.gov   128.102.154.176
    mx.nsi.nasa.gov       128.102.18.31

Fort Wainwright

  Netmask: 255.255.255.0
  Broadcast IP address: 198.120.56.255
  Gateway IP address: 198.120.56.1

  DNS Nameserver hosts:
    cloud2.polaris.espo.nasa.gov   198.120.56.42
    cloud4.polaris.espo.nasa.gov   198.120.56.43

Barbers Point
 
  Netmask: 255.255.255.0
  Broadcast IP address: 198.120.15.255
  Gateway IP address: 198.120.15.1
 
  DNS Nameserver hosts:
    cloud4.polaris.espo.nasa.gov   198.120.15.43

/etc/sys_id

Put your fully qualified hostname in the /etc/sys_id file. E.g. the following single line would be in the /etc/sys_id file:

myhost.mf.espo.nasa.gov

/etc/hosts

Minimally put your hostname and its IP address in your /etc/hosts file. E.g.

198.120.56.25    myhost.mf.espo.nasa.gov   myhost  loghost

Dynamic hostname to IP address lookup service

If dynamic hostname-to-IP-address lookup service using the Ames name servers is desired, it is probably easiest to point to a list of these servers using the /etc/resolv.conf file. E.g the following could be put into /etc/resolve.conf:

hostresorder bind local
domain mf.espo.nasa.gov
nameserver 198.120.56.42
nameserver 128.102.154.176
nameserver 128.102.18.31

The first nameserver is cloud2.polaris.espo.nasa.gov, a machine that is expected to be operating on the LAN for fast nameserver access. The second nameserver is the machine cloud1.arc.nasa.gov at NASA Ames that is expected to maintain the latest hostname vs IP addresses for the LAN. The primary cloud1 machine at Ames will download its hostname vs IP address table to the secondary cloud4 machine on the LAN. The 3rd nameserver entry is the machine mx.nsi.nasa.gov, a general nameserver at NASA Ames.

The hostresorder entry above will cause hostname lookups to be first attempted from the list of BIND nameservers whose IP addresses appear in the /etc/resolv.conf file as shown above. If that fails, the IP address for the given hostname will be looked up in your local /etc/hosts file.

You could also run the caching nameserver /usr/sbin/named, but it is probably simpler to not start named, and to directly use the nameservers in the list above. The first namesever at IP 198.120.56.130 is expected to be on the local LAN, so nameservice should be relatively fast.

Static hostname to IP address lookup service

If static hostname-to-IP-address lookup is to be used via the /etc/hosts file, ensure that the named daemon is not started at boot time. (E.g. put "off" into the /etc/config/named file.) Static hostname-to-IP-address lookup is handled in the usual way by placing IP-address vs hostname pairs in the /etc/hosts file. A sample list of local unix /etc/hosts entries are on the POLARIS web pages under the "COMMUNICATION" top-level button.

The following could be put into the /etc/resolve.conf file for static hostname to IP lookup:

hostresorder local
domain mf.espo.nasa.gov

/etc/config/ifconfig-*.options

Insert the following line in the /etc/config/ifconfig-*.options file for your ethernet interface (usually the /etc/config/ifconfig-1.options file) to define the netmask and broadcast addrees for the LAN.

The netmask is all 1 bits in the 1st 24 bits of the IP address, and all 0 bits in the last 8 bits of the IP address.

The broadcast address is our Class C 3 byte network address concatenated with a host part of all 1 bits in the 4th byte of the IP address, i.e 198.120.56.255.

netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 198.120.56.255

routed

Routing of packets to/from hosts not on the local LAN can be handled with the standard /usr/etc/routed daemon. This daemon can be turned on during boot time by having the following in the /etc/config/routed file:

on

The following option should be used in the /etc/config/routed.options file to prevent excessive amounts of broadcasting of route information by hosts on the LAN:

-q

Some systems also normally specify the -h option in addition to the -q option. Our default route on the LAN (for packets not going to another machine on the LAN) will be our local router gateway to the Internet. That router's IP address will be 198.120.56.1. The above routed command options should set things up to find this default address, and to suppress the unnecessary broadcast of each host's routing tables to all the other hosts on the LAN.

If you normally explicitly specify a default route with the /usr/etc/route command (usually in script /etc/inet.d/network), then this route should be our router at 198.120.56.1.

/etc/sendmail.cf

Set the local domain name for email to the one we are using for the LAN by finding the line within /etc/sendmail.cf that begins with "DD", and arrange to have that line be:

DDmf.espo.nasa.gov

Note, some sendmail.cf files call programs to define some of these macro values, and so the domain definition above may actually be defined elsewhere.

If you have a /etc/sendmail.cw file, it should contain your hostname on the LAN, e.g.:

myhost.mf.espo.nasa.gov myhost

/etc/TIMEZONE

You will need to set your system clock time to the area or operation. Valid timezones are only those in the /usr/share/lib/zoneinfo/ directories.

To have commands such as "date" and "ls -l" use local time, you can set the systemwide local time zone environment variable TZ by putting the following into the /etc/TIMEZONE file:

TZ=US/Pacific
export TZ

Other things to check

If your machine is going to be a print server, &/or will be spooling to print queues on other machines using the Berkeley network printing system, check your /etc/hosts.lpd and /etc/printcap files to ensure they contain the appropriate names of machines on the LAN.

Some machines may have entries in their cron table or license manager software's database file(s) that are specific to the LAN on which they are operating. You may want to check these for proper setup.

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