in.rarpd starts a daemon that responds to Reverse
Address Resolution Protocol (RARP) requests. The daemon forks a copy of
itself that runs in background. It must be run as root.
RARP is used by machines at boot time to discover their Internet Protocol
(IP) address. The booting machine provides its Ethernet address in a RARP request message. Using the ethers and hosts databases, in.rarpd
maps this Ethernet address into the corresponding IP address which it returns to the booting machine in an RARP reply message. The booting machine must be
listed in both databases for in.rarpd to locate its IP address. in.rarpd issues no
reply when it fails to locate an IP address.
in.rarpd uses the STREAMS-based Data Link Provider Interface (DLPI) message set to communicate
directly with the datalink device driver.
Finlayson, R., Mann, T., Mogul, J., and Theimer, M., RFC
903, A Reverse Address Resolution Protocol, Network Information
Center, SRI International, June 1984.
Unix International, Data Link Provider Interface,
Version 2, May 7, 1991, Sun Microsystems, 800-6915-01.