If you just installed hme interface and are now manually configuring it, you could receive this error message when running the following:
ifconfig hme0 inet ipaddr netmask + broadcast + -trailers up |
If there is no hostname.hme0 file, then the startup scripts do not execute the ifconfig hme0 plumb command. The user can either create the hostname.hme0 file or issue the ifconfig hme0 plumb command manually before attempting to configure the interface.