[SSI-devel] Re: Knoppix OpenSSI cluster

[Brian J. W. <Bri...@hp...>]

En Chiang Lee wrote:
>> mkdhcpd.conf should ignore any clustertab entries with '<DHCP>' for IP 
>> address. I don't think there's a need for an additional network boot 
>> state. In fact, I'd like to eliminate the E/P field sometime with a 
>> strategy that Chirag suggested.
> 
> 
> I've made the change to mkdhcpd.conf to ignore <DHCP> entries. I can't 
> remember what Chirag had suggested :-(

I have a copy of it somewhere. It involves generating an /etc/dhcpd.conf 
that can dynamically recognize whether a node is booting with PXE or 
Etherboot.

>> 2) Modify mkinitrd to generate a /linuxrc that responds appropriately 
>> to <DHCP>. It should run dhclient rather than trying to parse and 
>> apply a static IP address and netmask.
> 
> 
> dhclient runs a bash script "/sbin/dhclient-script" to configure the 
> specified interface. This script requires plenty of stuff, including:
>  - route
>  - /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/network-functions
>  - /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-<interface>
>  - hostname
>  - domainname (depends on what reply he gets from dhcpd)
>  - ping
>  - ifconfig
> Also, dhclient writes to /var/run/dhclient.pid and 
> /var/lib/dhcp/dhclient.leases.
> 
> These will all have to be included in the ramdisk (kinda big, don't you 
> think?)

Don't know. All this might not be that big, compared to the behemoths of 
libc and bash that we've already added to our initrd. See what the size 
difference is after adding the dhclient support.

>> 3) Add support for an optional line in /etc/clustertab that can 
>> specify an allowable range of dynamic address. mkdhcpd.conf should 
>> create an appropriate stanza for handing out these dynamic addresses. 
>> Try to restrict this stanza to just the MAC addresses of <DHCP> nodes, 
>> if the syntax of /etc/dhcpd.conf lets you do this. Also, the various 
>> validation routines in Clustertab.pm, etc. should make sure that the 
>> dynamic address range is on the proper network, and that no static 
>> addresses in /etc/clustertab are part of the dynamic range.
> 
> 
> I'll look  at the dhcpd.conf format and see how this can be done.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> En Chiang