Observations by the support group suggest it's done by:
* broadcasting to all listening hosts to ask what host they're using
as a Yellow Pages server (see below), to convert between Internet
addresses and host names;
* requesting the host identified by the respones to provide Yellow Pages
service for the PC-NFS machine;
* obtaining the PC-NFS machine's own Internet addressing information
from that server, to start mounting it.
HOWEVER this sequence apparently fails to distinguish Yellow Pages servers which are actually usable to the ETC subnet; not all the ones in the local domain are. If the PC asks for service from one that isn't, the mounting process will hang. This was happening rather frequently.
RARP has therefore been turned OFF, and the following sequence
hardcoded into NETWORK.BAT:
* leave Yellow Pages off
* keep a very small "hosts" table in \NFS which gives the names and
Internet addresses of the PC itself, a couple of UNIX hosts which
*can* supply Yellow Pages service to the Center's net; and maybe
a couple of other useful addresses. Without Yellow Pages, this will
be the PC's only way of addressing those machines.
But keep the table *short* -- it will only have to serve until an
actual Yellow Pages server can be obtained, a couple of steps later;
* run NET START RDR with the actual name of the PC as parameter;
this will cause it to avoid using RARP to obtain the name.
* declare the Yellow Pages domain for which the server is needed --
in our case, "uci-ics" (NOT "ics.uci", which may be
found in other contexts).
* use NET YPSET * to request a Yellow Pages server; the choice will
be limited to those listed in \NFS\HOSTS.
Yellow Pages will now be ON, and \NFS\HOSTS will probably be completely ignored.
This has to be coded by hand in the NETWORK.BAT file -- it does not appear possible to do it within the NFSCONF program.