[syslinux] filename remapping -> hostip filename prefix?

[Erik Dykema]

Mr. Anvin-
	Thanks very much for your response.  I have decided to try and fix the 
problem by upgrading the tftp server to tftpd-hpa.  Incidentally, the 
guy here at Columbia who has been maintaining our tftpd server, Johan 
Anderson, says that he has been chatting with you in the past, so I am 
merely following in the footsteps of giants.
	One question I have:
	Our tftpd server seems to be a much branch of the same BSD code from 
which you tftpd-hpa server was created.  We have made a modification to 
it, however, which produces the following result;
	A machine's IP address is used to prefix it's get request, so that when 
machine 128.1.1.1 requests the filename "/treasure", what it really gets 
out of the filesystem is NOT the file /var/tftp/treasure, but the file:
/var/tftp/128.1.1.1/treasure
	Where "/var/tftp" is the directory specified on the command line or in 
inetd.conf.
	We then have many directories in our /var/tftp directory , some of 
which are links to a 'default' set of images, some of which are more 
particular, which allows us more fine grained control over what certain 
machines see, without having to pass directory names through DHCP.
	I was contemplating attempting to extract this functionality from our 
codebase and merge it into your code base, and came across the filename 
remapping options in your server, which I suspect might be able to do 
exactly what we do.  I was looking for an example to confirm, but have 
found none.  Do you think that the filename re-mapping stuff could be 
used in this way?

thanks much again,
Erik Dykema

H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Erik Dykema wrote:
> 
>>    I am curious as to the possibility of 'mtftp for the initial boot',
>>which I assume to mean that you could use a different tftp server /
>>daemon to grab the kernel & subsequent data off of.  Is this possible?
>>If so, how would I configure it to make it work? This would really make
>>my life easier.
>>
> 
> 
> No, it wouldn't.  This pretty much requires you to have the MTFTP server
> on the same machine, which is completely useless in your application.
> 
> Trying to mess with this is pretty pointless, really.
> 
> 
>>    This is important to me because I am not easily able to control
>>which tftp server the DHCP server points to.  I could, however, setup my
>>own tftp server (for example, tftpd-hpa) on a different machine that
>>would be right.  I have gotten my machine (Dell PowerApp Web100) to grab
>>pxelinux off the network, and then pxelinux complains about not having
>>tsize, which makes me think that the tftp server that dhcp is pointing
>>to sucks.
> 
> 
> You need the DHCP server to send the next-server option.  There isn't
> any other solution.
> 
> 	-hpa