[Gllug] arp problem?

[Adrian McMenamin]

On Sun, 2006-06-11 at 12:54 +0100, John Winters wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-06-11 at 12:36 +0100, Adrian McMenamin wrote:
> > On Sun, 2006-06-11 at 03:28 +0100, Casper Gasper wrote:
> > > On 10/06/06, Adrian McMenamin <adrian at mcmen.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > > > I have a network card (eth0) attached to this (Ubuntu) box which has a
> > > > crossover cable connection to one other device.
> > > >
> > > > I assign the attached device's IP addr using arp - I have this in
> > > > rc.local:
> > > >
> > > > arp -s 192.168.61.55 00:d0:f1:03:12:b9
> > > 
> > >   Why do you need to put a static entry in the arp table?
> > > 
> > What is the alternative? (Seriously).
> 
> The alternative (normal) way is just to let the boxes discover MAC
> addresses using the ARP mechanism.  The conversation goes something like
> this:
> 
> 1st box (shouting): Anyone out there got IP address XX.XX.XX.XX?
> 2nd box:            Yup.  That's me.
> 
But the second box doesn't have an IP address, it just has a MAC
address. The box is booted with a very simple slave program which simply
loads loads the kernel into the right memory location and runs the
bootloader.

How would I implement an alternative in this situation?

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