DHCP/bootstrapping of various devices

May 09, 2005 3 Replies
G

Hi,



I'm working with a system where several different but related devices may wish to boot by downloading an OS kernel from a central source. I was hoping to achieve this using DHCP, which does everything I want except one thing - I can't find a way to identify to the DHCP server what type of device I am.



For example, I'd like to be able to tell the DHCP server that I am device type A, and it would respond with the correct configuration details appropriate for type A. If a type B device makes a request, the DHCP server would respond with a type B configuration and so on.



Are there any standard ways of achieving this ?


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T

Yes.

The DHCP protocol contains a Client ID option which is sent from the client to the server. The server can distinguish the different clients and the responses sent by the identifier.

If the identifier is not sent separately, the server uses the client MAC (Media Access Control) address, e.g. the 6-byte Ethernet address instead.

The exact way how to tell the server the different client configurations from the identifiers depends on your server.

The Diskless-HOWTO from the Linux Documentation Project might be of help.

HTH

Tauno Voipio tauno voipio (at) iki fi
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G

Ah, I see it. I didn't spot that when I looked at other summaries of the protocol. I guess it is less frequently used since most people just want to retrieve an IP address, gateway settings and so on.

I'd spoken to a few other people and they talked about using PXE, but that seems quite overkill for what I need to do. All I need is a filename and an IP address ;)

Thanks again for your help.

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T

PXE is a totally different beast, destined to be between the initial network boot and O/S start-up.

Thank you for positive feedback - it keeps the response engine running.

Tauno Voipio tauno voipio (at) iki fi
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