[mythtv-users] Questions on PXE booting a frontend

[Ronald Frazier]

OK, I did a little bit more investigating to try and figure out why my
setup works fine when some seem to think it shouldn't be possible.

As far as my backend running DHCP, the dhcpd.conf file does not have a
range statement. According to the man page for that file, you need a
range statement if you are going to dynamically assign addresses.
Since I don't have that, the master backend will not respond to DHCP
requests from anything other than my frontends (which are handled
specifically by the host blocks). So that eliminates potential
problems for any other computers on my network. So the only question
is about the frontends (why don't they sometimes use the router's DHCP
response).

Looking at the wiki page for PXE (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Execution_Environment ), it
indicates that the DHCPDISCOVER request from the PXE client will
contain additional options indicating the PXE request. The DHCP
servers will then reply back with a DHCPOFFER response, and if the
DHCP server can provide info about PXE services, it will set those
option in the response. So it seems to me that even if both DHCP
servers reply, the client trying to do a PXE boot would ignore any
DHCP responses that don't offer info on PXE services as they would be
useless (yeah, you have an ip address, but what do you do with it if
you don't have an OS to load?)

-- 
Ron
Ronald Frazier Photography - http://www.ronfphoto.com/
Blogging About Photography - http://ronfrazier.blogspot.com/