Re: [Etherboot-developers] Wake-on-LAN patch

[Markus G. <ma...@gu...>]

> I'm not interested in incorporating the patch into the mainstream
> because it requires that the MAC address of the server be hardwired into
> the ROM, making the ROM very site specific.

I share Ken's sentiment about not making the ROM site-specific, but
I think there is a workaround, that might be acceptable to some users.
I have not been able to find an authoratitive specification for the
Wake-On-Lan protocol, but it does appear that both broadcast and
multicast packages are supported. How about sending broadcast packages
from within etherboot, whenever we fail to detect a running BOOTP/DHCP
server?

I guess, multicast requests would be even better, but not only does
this seem to be a feature that only few NICs support, it is also not
quite clear to me, how you'd set it up so that a particular NIC joins
a multicast group. Also, which group should we use? Is there a
standard? If not, how difficult is it these days to have IANA allocate
a group for us?


Markus

-- 
Markus Gutschke                                Resonate, Inc.
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