Syslinux - Mar 2003 - pxelinux, dhcp and multiple interfaces on the device

Short version:
  Is there a way to find out which interface PXE booted from?

Long version:
  I'm working on a cluster of machines, each using a networked
root filesystem, booting via PXE.  Some of these machines have
multiple interfaces, some of which are going to be on networks
that have functioning DHCP servers that will offer addresses.

  I'd like to have modular network drivers.

  So I've got the linux kernel loading via PXE (we dictate that the 
the machine be installed so that the PXE boot happens on the right
network).  I've got an initrd that has all of the appropriate modules
available, so I can load the drivers.

  My problem is that once I have the drivers loaded, I have several
interfaces, without any indication of which one I booted from.  I
need to do network configuration, and further boot procedures using
the same interface that I got my kernel from.

  One thought is to do a dhcp query from each of my interfaces,
and compare the results against the information provided if I do
'IPAPPEND 1' in the pxelinux config.   
 
  Is this something that keeping the PXE stack around would help
with?   If so, any pointers to code that runs in the linux kernel
to use this stack?

  thanks for any suggestions...
 
david d zuhn,  zoo at unlimitedscale.com

david d zuhn wrote:
> Short version:
>   Is there a way to find out which interface PXE booted from?
> 
> Long version:
>   I'm working on a cluster of machines, each using a networked
> root filesystem, booting via PXE.  Some of these machines have
> multiple interfaces, some of which are going to be on networks
> that have functioning DHCP servers that will offer addresses.
> 
Currently there is no way to do this in PXELINUX.  The right way to do
this would involve PXELINUX modification, in particular PXELINUX would
need to pass the interface address (there is a PXE call to query the
interface hardware address) to the kernel, which could then match it.

Your suggestion of querying (via DHCP) for an address and see which
network returns the correct network address would also work.

	-hpa

Hi,

"Julian Picht" <da_ghozt at yahoo.de> schrieb am 07.03.03
17:31:47:
> shouldn't it be possible to say keeppxe so the pxe stack keeps
available.
You can do this, but AFAIK you can't access the PXE stack from the linux
kernel. (Does it even survive the initialization of the kernel?).

Regards,

Josef



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