The Citrine Citadel
Reverse-ARP (RARP) is a largely-obsolete protocol for autoconfiguring IPv4 hosts on a local network. For environments that still need it (e.g., to netboot older Sun workstations), rarpd-dx is a simple server which responds to RARP requests.
This version was originally written by Alexey Kuznetsov and subsequently maintained by several others. It is extracted from the iputils-20211215 release into a distinct package with its own standalone build system, as the utility has been removed from newer versions of iputils. Various bug fixes and improvements have since been incorporated.
All released files are available from the rarpd-dx archive directory. The latest development sources may be browsed online or cloned directly using git, e.g.,
git clone https://git.draconx.ca/rarpd-dx.git
The most recent release is version 1.1, released on 2026-09-05. Source code for this version is available in rarpd-dx-1.1.tar.gz (signature). Noteworthy changes in this release:
/etc/tftpboot to ${sysconfdir}/tftpboot. This can
be tailored for a specific system at build time by using the new
--enable-default-tftpboot configure option.--log-target rarpd option provides the ability to log directly
to files or the standard error stream, instead of using the system
logger (which remains the default).--ethers rarpd option to bypass the system ethers database.-A (--arp) mode.Use the signature file to verify that the corresponding source bundle is intact. After downloading both files, if GnuPG is installed, the signature can be verified with a command like:
gpg --verify rarpd-dx-1.1.tar.gz.sig rarpd-dx-1.1.tar.gz
If the verification fails because you don’t have the required public key, that key can be imported with a command such as:
gpg --keyserver keys.draconx.ca --recv-keys 5B45D3D185B8E1F6
Then run the verify command again. Alternatively, you can
download the public keyring manually and import it
using gpg --import.
Rarpd-dx is written in C, so a working C compiler is required. Its functionality depends on the Linux-specific packet socket functionality, and probably does not work on non-Linux hosts.
Please send suggestions, bug reports, patches or any other correspondence regarding rarpd-dx by electronic mail to Nick Bowler <nbowler@draconx.ca>.
Rarpd-dx is free software: you can redistribute and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License or (at your option) any later version.