Re: [Etherboot-developers] changes checked into CVS

[Michael B. <mb...@fe...>]

On Tue, 2 Jul 2002 ke...@us... wrote:
> I have checked into CVS:
> For 5.0.7 and 5.1.2 candidates:
> Changes to NIC identification scheme from variable length string to
> fixed binary structure. Added ISA IDs to drivers.
> Please sync your working copy with cvs update.

A couple of issues:

1. the "nic_id" struct now contains the length of the
   etherboot-encapsulated-options packet, which does not belong in this
   struct since it is unrelated to the NIC id.

2. These changes break backwards compatibility for the sake of 8 bytes
   saved in the DHCP request packet (which is not really size-critical).
   I know that the Mandrake distribution has already included related code
   that depends the old-format NIC ID scheme present in RC1.

I really think that we should revert to the old plain-text method, where
the IDs were strings such as "PCI:1186:1300" rather than a binary sequence
0x01,0x86,0x11,0x00,0x13.  Aside from anything else, it makes a real mess
of dhcpd.conf files to start manipulating binary structures like this. :-(

Michael Brown
http://www.fensystems.co.uk
--
Fen Systems: Linux made easy for schools