rpc.bootparamd(8)

rpc.bootparamd8

Boot parameter server

Usage

rpc.bootparamd [-ds] [-f file] [-r router]

Overview

rpc.bootparamd is a server process that provides information to diskless clients necessary for booting. It consults the file /etc/bootparams. It should normally be started from /etc/rc.

This version will allow the use of aliases on the hostname in the /etc/bootparams file. The hostname returned in response to the booting client's whoami request will be the name that appears in the config file, not the canonical name. In this way you can keep the answer short enough so that machines that cannot handle long hostnames won't fail during boot.

While parsing, if a line containing just “+” is found, and the YP subsystem is active, the YP map bootparams will be searched immediately.

The options are as follows:

-d

Display the debugging information. The daemon does not fork in this case.

-f file

Specify the file to read boot parameters from. Defaults to /etc/bootparams.

-r router

Set the default router (a hostname or IP address). This defaults to the machine running the server.

-s

Log the debugging information with syslog.

Files

/etc/bootparams

default configuration file

Warning

If rpc.bootparamd is run on a system which is also running YP, your YP domainname will be made public information.

Releases

61 releases since OpenBSD 2.1; the text changed 13 times.

  1. 2.1
  2. 2.2–2.3
  3. 2.4
  4. 2.5
  5. 2.6
  6. 2.7–2.8
  7. 2.9
  8. 3.0–3.2
  9. 3.3
  10. 3.4–4.0
  11. 4.1
  12. 4.2–5.3
  13. 5.4–7.2
  14. 7.3–8.0

Authors

Originally written by Klas Heggemann ⟨[email protected]⟩.

Bugs

You may find the syslog loggings too verbose.

It's not clear if the non-canonical hack mentioned above is a good idea.

From man 8.0-current-20261101 in OpenBSD 8.0-current (2026-11-01). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.