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Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2008 10:26:57 +0100
From: Ulrich Spoerlein <uspoerlein@gmail.com>
To: Luigi Rizzo <rizzo@iet.unipi.it>
Message-ID: <20081122092657.GC1394@roadrunner.spoerlein.net>
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Cc: current@FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: RFC - per-host configuration of pxe booting
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On Sat, 22.11.2008 at 02:23:51 +0100, Luigi Rizzo wrote:
> The goal of this email is to figure out how to load host-specific
> configurations from pxeboot -- maybe as simple as loading
> /boot/loader.conf.${hostname} and possibly something slightly more
> flexible that allows me to define machine 'classes' (e.g. based on
> similar hardware configurations etc.).
> 
>     loader_conf_files="/boot/device.hints /boot/device.hints.${dhcp.host-name} /boot/loader.conf /boot/loader.conf.${dhcp.host-name}"
> 
> It might be useful to let dhcp pass more parameters to pxeboot
> so e.g. we can expand it to a 'machine class' which can be used
> for multiple machines. This should be relatively trivial to impelemnt,
> but it requires modifications to the pxeboot binary -- no big deal
> since this is something centralized.

Hi Luigi,

while the dhcp host-name is a good start, you should definitely add a
dhcp class-name (vendor-class-identifier) to make it useful for booting
a whole range of thin clients, for example.

Cheers,
Ulrich Spoerlein
-- 
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool,
than to speak, and remove all doubt.