Changing DECnet nodes numbers

[CCTR114 at canterbury.ac.nz]

Thank you to all those who replied to my question about changing a DECnet
node number on a Sun running Sunlink DNI. There is a bug in the software
which prevents you from changing the node address in the ``proper'' way.
Here is a list of what to do if anyone has to do this at their site.

1. Use dniaddr to get the ethernet address of the node. For us this was

dniaddr 53.106 

The ethernet address was aa:00:04:6a:d4 for address 53.106. 

2. Edit the rc.boot file (or other rc.* file) to use your new DECnet
    ethernet address as follows

ifconfig le0 ether aa:00:04:6a:d4

3. Edit the rc file (or where ever your dni startup is) to use your new
   DECnet node number 

/usr/sunlink/dni/dnistart le0 53.106 >/dev/console

4. Change to the /usr/sunlink/dni directory and save all the *.dat files
   under a new name, just in case you need them later.  Before you do this
   you might want to save an ascii copy of the ncp data base by piping the
   output into a file as follows

dnincp show known nodes >decnet.nodes

5. Delete all the *.dat files (these are permnln.dat, permnm.dat,
   permsnt.dat, volnm.dat) and run dninmars.

6. Reboot

7. After reboot you will need to put all the nodes back in the ncp data
   base.  The saved file of nodes will be a big help.

This is not a common operation but I hope it saves anyone who has to do it
a lot of time and effort. Hopefully the problem will be fixed in a future
release of the software.

         Bill Rea  w.rea at canterbury.ac.nz