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From: Magnate on 9 Jan 2008 05:26
Hi All,

I'm trying to set up a BOOTP/tftpd server so that I can boot diskless
machines on my LAN. I've read the dhcpd docs, and it seems that dhcpd
requires the MAC address of every machine to which it will serve the files
via tftp. The original bootpd (ie. via inetd, without dhcpd) also seems to
require MAC addresses.

Is there a way to set up a server without requiring the MAC addresses?
Either using dhcpd, or bootpd, or something else altogether?

If all else fails I can just spend a few hours painfully writing down all
the MAC addresses and putting them into my dhcpd.conf, but I can't believe
nobody's ever wanted to do it without before.

Anyone?

CC


From: Chris Cox on 9 Jan 2008 10:52
Magnate wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I'm trying to set up a BOOTP/tftpd server so that I can boot diskless
> machines on my LAN. I've read the dhcpd docs, and it seems that dhcpd
> requires the MAC address of every machine to which it will serve the files
> via tftp. The original bootpd (ie. via inetd, without dhcpd) also seems to
> require MAC addresses.
>
> Is there a way to set up a server without requiring the MAC addresses?
> Either using dhcpd, or bootpd, or something else altogether?
>
> If all else fails I can just spend a few hours painfully writing down all
> the MAC addresses and putting them into my dhcpd.conf, but I can't believe
> nobody's ever wanted to do it without before.

Well... if you didn't use something (relatively) unique like the MAC
address... you'd probably have to code something else by hand anyhow.
True?

Haven't looked at booting diskless to determine why a fixed address
is necessary. You'd think that a truly dynamic one would suffice.
From: Magnate on 9 Jan 2008 11:28
"Chris Cox" <notccox(a)notairmail.net> wrote in message
news:13o9rd9lms6fg17(a)corp.supernews.com...
> Magnate wrote:
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I'm trying to set up a BOOTP/tftpd server so that I can boot diskless
>> machines on my LAN. I've read the dhcpd docs, and it seems that dhcpd
>> requires the MAC address of every machine to which it will serve the
>> files
>> via tftp. The original bootpd (ie. via inetd, without dhcpd) also seems
>> to
>> require MAC addresses.
>>
>> Is there a way to set up a server without requiring the MAC addresses?
>> Either using dhcpd, or bootpd, or something else altogether?
>>
>> If all else fails I can just spend a few hours painfully writing down all
>> the MAC addresses and putting them into my dhcpd.conf, but I can't
>> believe
>> nobody's ever wanted to do it without before.
>
> Well... if you didn't use something (relatively) unique like the MAC
> address... you'd probably have to code something else by hand anyhow.
> True?

Why? Just as a dhcp server will hand out IP addresses and leases to anyone
who asks, why can't we have a bootp server which will hand out boot files to
anyone who asks? Why does there need to be any identification of who's
asking? If the files don't enable the client to boot successfully, that's
hardly the server's problem.

I had presumed it was a security issue - it hadn't occurred to me that it
could be a technical necessity.

> Haven't looked at booting diskless to determine why a fixed address
> is necessary. You'd think that a truly dynamic one would suffice.

My thoughts exactly. Most of a day's desk research has yielded nothing
though. Bizarre - I'd have thought it would be very painful to program the
MAC addresses into dhcpd for a many-thousand-seat deployment.

CC


From: Moe Trin on 9 Jan 2008 14:51
On Wed, 09 Jan 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.setup, in article
<j09f55-kvo.ln1(a)baba.sadnet>, Magnate wrote:

>Why? Just as a dhcp server will hand out IP addresses and leases to anyone
>who asks, why can't we have a bootp server which will hand out boot files to
>anyone who asks? Why does there need to be any identification of who's
>asking? If the files don't enable the client to boot successfully, that's
>hardly the server's problem.

Well, I don't think the bootfile for a Sun SparcStation5 is going to
work very well on your NCD X terminal, never mind that Intel box.

>My thoughts exactly. Most of a day's desk research has yielded nothing
>though. Bizarre - I'd have thought it would be very painful to program the
>MAC addresses into dhcpd for a many-thousand-seat deployment.

I don't use DHCP, never mind BOOTP, but I don't believe DHCP _needs_ the
MAC address by default - certainly there are enough people asking how to
make it match MAC to IP is such a hint. My understanding is that most
documents do suggest using it, but that's to reduce the horrendous
security hole of handing out IPs to anyone who asks.

Have you run through the DHCP mini-howto included in most Linux installs?

-rw-rw-r-- 1 gferg ldp 33678 Oct 20 2000 DHCP

Old guy
From: Magnate on 11 Jan 2008 07:09
"Moe Trin" <ibuprofin(a)painkiller.example.tld> wrote in message
news:slrnfoa9d6.ohe.ibuprofin(a)compton.phx.az.us...
> On Wed, 09 Jan 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.setup, in
> article
> <j09f55-kvo.ln1(a)baba.sadnet>, Magnate wrote:
>
>>Why? Just as a dhcp server will hand out IP addresses and leases to anyone
>>who asks, why can't we have a bootp server which will hand out boot files
>>to
>>anyone who asks? Why does there need to be any identification of who's
>>asking? If the files don't enable the client to boot successfully, that's
>>hardly the server's problem.
>
> Well, I don't think the bootfile for a Sun SparcStation5 is going to
> work very well on your NCD X terminal, never mind that Intel box.

As I said, that's hardly the server's problem. It so happens that I only
want to offer one bootfile from my bootp server (Debian installer for x86),
so there is no need for the server to distinguish between clients - it
simply has to offer them what it has.

>>My thoughts exactly. Most of a day's desk research has yielded nothing
>>though. Bizarre - I'd have thought it would be very painful to program the
>>MAC addresses into dhcpd for a many-thousand-seat deployment.
>
> I don't use DHCP, never mind BOOTP, but I don't believe DHCP _needs_ the
> MAC address by default - certainly there are enough people asking how to
> make it match MAC to IP is such a hint. My understanding is that most
> documents do suggest using it, but that's to reduce the horrendous
> security hole of handing out IPs to anyone who asks.

But dhcpd already hands out IPs to anyone who asks! I don't see why handing
out bootfiles to anyone who asks is any greater security risk. The point is
that on my LAN, behind my firewall, I know that I'm the only person who's
going to want to boot anything from this server, so I'm happy for it to be
promiscuous.

> Have you run through the DHCP mini-howto included in most Linux installs?

I don't seem to have anything called DHCP mini-howto, but I do have a dhcpd
man page, and the way I read it, dhcpd will not offer boot files without MAC
addresses. The relevant section is this:

BOOTP Support
Each BOOTP client must be explicitly declared in the dhcpd.conf
file.
A very basic client declaration will specify the client network
inter-
face's hardware address and the IP address to assign to that
client.
If the client needs to be able to load a boot file from the
server,
that file's name must be specified. A simple bootp client
declaration
might look like this:

host haagen {
hardware ethernet 08:00:2b:4c:59:23;
fixed-address 239.252.197.9;
filename "/tftpboot/haagen.boot";
}

I can't find any example of configuring dhcpd to offer boot files without
using the above method. If anyone can post such a configuration, or a link
to one, I'd be very grateful.

CC


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