Re: [Etherboot-developers] DHCP option 175

[Christoph P. <chr...@al...>]

In my opinion, ASCII text is always preferred. For DHCPD maintainence
binary data is not a good idea ! And the byte space is definitive not
critical in this point (3 or 8 bytes ....)

But is the whole stuff really a good idea ?
Is it important to know the interface on the client side ?

Normally an admin should know the components, ...
On the other hand, PCs are quickly exchanged ...

But should the loaded image not independent of the NIC ?
A Linux kenrel for example should have all needed NIC
drivers compiled in. The same is for GRUB (after all drivers
are in the well state, that they do not block in probing
the NICs).

The string (option 175) must be very clear and simple,
and in my opinion TEXT.
Using PCI ID is perhaps not the best idea ! Perhaps it is a
better idea to give "keywords" at boot ROM compile time,
which is passed as tag 175.

Example: 
I have a new PC with onboard 3COM another with onboard i82559
and one with a classic rtl8139 NIC inserted. Then I have to 
build the 3 boot ROMs, like

make bin32/3c900.rom KEY175="NEWPC_TYPE_1"
make bin32/eepro100.rom KEY175="NEWPC_TYPE_2"
make bin32/rtl8139.rom KEY175="OLDPC_TYPE_1"

Or in another way.
(Perhaps we take another build call so that an admin can build
up and maintain his classes of boot ROMs).

With this method, the maintainer can handle equal or different
types of NICs and machines. Often 2 NICs of the same type may
need different options, etc....


With friendly regards
Christoph



Ken Yap wrote:
> 
> >How about this standard for the NIC tag?
> >
> >       "PCI" or "ISA" (3 bytes)
> 
> Actually that's probably a waste of space, binary 1 = PCI, 2 = ISA,
> others for later use should suffice.
> 
> >       Vendor ID (2 bytes network order)
> >       Device ID (2 bytes network order)
> 
> 6 bytes total.
> 
> As for any potential objection that it's unreadable binary, the rest of
> the DHCP packet is unreadable binary anyway, space matters (the more
> parsimonious you are with your options, the more space for other
> options), and it makes the Etherboot shorter, just copy in the IDs, via
> htons().
> 
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