[syslinux] Re: Network Boot IP Configuration Dilemma

[Jon Nalley]

I am having an issue along these same lines...

I am attempting to boot several systems that are each using different
NIC's for PXE i.e. eth0 on host1 eth2 on host2 etc.  The primary reason
for not always using eth0 on each machine is due to the hardware
characteristics of the various systems i.e. on host1 eth0 is a 10/100
NIC while eth0 on host2 is a gigabit NIC.  The desire is to maintain a
"management" network where all PXE/DHCP/TFTP occurs using the 10/100
interface if one exists.

Since as I mentioned I am using a diverse set of hardware - I am using
the "IPAPPEND" parameter, but I have turned off CONFIG_IP_PNP in the
kernel and manually parse /proc/cmdline for the ip= stuff after I have
booted.  This is primarily so that I can use kudzu to identify the
appropriate NIC driver to load.  I also pass an additional kernel
parameter "mgmtdevice=ethx" so that once I have booted the ramdisk I
know which interface to use.  This works, but requires me to know ahead
of time which interface will be used for PXE on each machine and also to
maintain separate pxelinux.cfg files for each machine.

It would be great if pxelinux could add the interface that was used to
PXE as the "device" argument to ip=.  Or create an additional parameter
that would let me know which NIC was used to PXE once I am in the
ramdisk.  Perhaps there is some other way to determine the NIC that was
used to PXE?  I have no idea how difficult this would be - so please
forgive me if I am suggesting the impossible :-)

Regards,

Jon Nalley


> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2003 16:08:57 -0600
> From: Fred Feirtag <ffeirtag at integrityns.com>
> Subject: [syslinux] Network Boot IP Configuration Dilemma
> To: syslinux at zytor.com
> Message-ID: <3F590979.40504 at integrityns.com>

<snip>

> I suggest that the syntax of IPAPPEND be changed to allow a specific
> device to be named:  "IPAPPEND 1|devname"  ("devname" will usually be
> eth0).  Unless and until this is done, here is my hack to change
> "ip=#:#:#:#" to "ip=#:#:#:#::eth0:" in pxelinux.asm (after "genipopt"):

<snip>