[syslinux] pxelinux feature request

H. Peter Anvin hpa at zytor.com
Tue Jan 4 13:20:07 PST 2005


Pierre Neyron wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> We would also be very interested in such a configuration file include 
> feature.
> 
> What we are doing here actually, is adding a PXE environement in a 
> already existing one, adding a dynamic configuration feature (see my 
> previous mails about that: patches for tftpd to generate files on the fly).
> As we have a very restricted access to the tftp server and to the files 
> it stores, we use an extra one on which we have a full control, in order 
> to be able to generate configuration files on the fly (e.g. when 
> pxelinux requests it) using scripts.
> We cannot change the dhcp next-server option as we may chain some other 
> PXE bootstraps that use the original tftp server to retrieve their files 
> (kernel, aso...).
> 
> As of now, we use a modified version of pxelinux with the tftp server ip 
> address being hard coded instead of using the one provided via the dhcp 
> option. It fits our needs, but it's definitively not a nice hack.
> So, it will be very nice it is possible to specify in a master 
> configuration file located on the original tftp server, to actually 
> fetch a configuration from another tftp server... In fact, the perfect 
> mechanism would be to have pxelinux restart its full configuration file 
> lookup (by MAC, then IP, then default...) but using the new tftp server 
> address instead of the one provided via dhcp. Furthermore, this way, 
> there seems to be no need to have several configuration files opened at 
> the same time, am I right ?
> 

That's right.  What I'm thinking of doing at some point in the future is 
to have an API call to restart with new configuration file.  Thus, a 
COMBOOT module can provide the policy (load specific file X versus 
search in a different place versus...)

	-hpa




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