On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 03:12:04AM -0500, Joey Hess wrote: The message is indeed fiveteen months old.
> Since it looks like hppa automated installs cannot be done with a > preseed url in the kernel boot parameters, due to size restrictions, I > took at look at ways to deliver the information about preseeding via > dhcp. > > First, how kickstart does it: I was under the impression before that > kickstart allowed specifying the kickstart file to use in the dhcp > configuation, and that this would work with PXE booting. Well, sort of. > Kickstart will look at the dhcp next-server and filename fields in the > dhcp response, and try to use something like next-server:/filename > (nfs) as the kickstart file. However, I don't see how this can be used > for PXE booting, since we need filename there to point to the file to > boot, and if next-server is set, it is used as the tftp server. The > filename field is also used when netbooting sparc, hppa, etc. So > overloading it to be used for preseeding doesn't seem good. In fact all > the kickstart pxe boot setups I've found specify the kickstart file via > a ks= kernel boot option to avoid this. > > Next I looked at the dhcp rfcs. The dhcp options seemed like the obvious > way to get an url passed from dhcp to d-i. I looked at using option 43, > the vendor defined option, since its use is quite close to how d-i would > work. However, at least the debian dhcp package does not allow option-43 > in dhcpd.conf. > > We could pick an option in the 128-254 range and use it, but we might be > violating rfc2939 by doing so, since it requires that these "MUST NOT be > defined for use by any publicly distributed DHCP server, client or relay > agent implementations". I'm not sure how much wiggle room there is in > "client" -- it's not like d-i's dhcp client would know about the option, > though d-i would, and we'd have to put something like "request option-nnn" in > dhclient.conf. There's always the potential that whatever private use > option number we choose will be used at some installation site for > something else. > > We could add a boot option to make d-i look at a particular dhcp option > for preseeding, and leave it up to the admin. preseed/dhcp_opt=128. This > might still run out of kernel command line space on hppa (it's very > small) and it's a lot of layers of indirection to get to the preseed > file. > > We could go through the process to get an option numer assigned by iana. > I don't have the time or the patience, but if someone does this is > probably the best way. > > -- > see shy jo Meanwhile we have `netcfg` identifing itself during DHCP-request and `network-preseed` getting the preseed/url from the DHCP-lease. Together they solve the above described problem, they make DHCP preseeding possible. Cheers Geert Stappers -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
