Re: [Etherboot-developers] Error reporting...

[<ebi...@ln...>]

ke...@us... (Ken Yap) writes:

> >What looks like a solution is to send an SNMP trap.  This could be picked
> >up by any standard SNMP software.  What remains are designing the trap
> >and figuring where what MIB to put it under.  Currently the plan is to
> >get an enterprise number of LinuxNetworX and find a place in our MIB tree
> >for it, but I'm not certain if this is the best way to do this.
> >
> >The case where I'm thinking about reporting errors is not when a timeout
> >occurs and a retransmit happens but instead when etherboot gives up.  I'm
> >pretty familiar with that code path :)
> >
> >Comments, critiscims, and especially better ideas are welcome.
> 
> This is an excellent idea.  I think using SNMP is the way to go. Are
> there any MIBs for boot loaders?  Maybe Etherboot can start a trend
> here. In the meantime a private MIB should be ok to start with. What
> statii do you intend to return?

I'm not certain.  I skimmed the standard MIB's and didn't see one for
bootloaders.  Nor did I see an references to TRAP-TYPE or
NOTIFICATION-TYPE that looked hopeful.  This is in the thinking stage
and a month or more out from the actual implementation.

There is a hacked up error reporting interface that so of my coworkers
are implementing now, and I wanted to find an viable alternative
standard interface that we can integrate with etherboot.  Changing
the BOOT ROMS in existing systems is not to be taken lightly.

Mostly I'm thinking of an error saying something failed, and an
error message string.  So TFTP errors can be returned all of the
way up the chain.  But I really haven't thought it out yet.

Eric