Re: Final static ip patch

On Mar 14, 2006, at 8:24 AM, Ricardo Carrillo Cruz wrote:
> I suceeded to boot an image with a static ip address.
> The patches  are attached to this email.

Congratulations, Ricardo!

This has been a capability that people have asked for a long time,  
and it is a useful feature.

> Of course,feel free to post bugs or comments so we can improve the  
> patch

This patch is a good start.

Thinking out loud a little, I would like to consider what information  
_must_ be provided if one chooses to use a STATIC method for booting.

Here are some thoughts:

- I think we might want to rename STATIC_ADDRESS to something like  
USE_STATIC_BOOT_INFO

- Besides STATIC_SERVER_IP and STATIC_GATEWAY_IP, I think we might  
want require:

     STATIC_SUBNET_MASK
     STATIC_BOOTFILE

Subnet masks are not always the defaults, and DHCP/BOOTP servers  
almost always return them, and rather than overloading  
DEFAULT_FILENAME, I think it would be better to have a separate value  
for the case of USE_STATIC_BOOT_INFO.

We could then do a sanity check to make sure that if  
USE_STATIC_BOOT_INFO is defined, then all required STATIC_* values  
are defined, and error out of the compilation, if they are not.

Then there is the question of DNS.  Perhaps we also need:

     STATIC_DNS_SERVER

This one could be optional, if the STATIC_BOOTFILE is using an IP  
address for as in:

     CFLAGS+=	-DSTATIC_BOOTFILE=\"tftp://10.205.99.73/thinstation.nbi\"

If, however, DNS_RESOLVER is defined, and a hostname is used, we  
would need to make sure we had a DNS server statically defined.

Now your patch is useful as it stands, and certainly adds  
functionality.  Are you interested in working on it further? (I just  
saw Anselm's comments, Thanks Anselm :)

If you are willing to work on it a bit more, I think it could be even  
better.

If you don't feel you can right now, perhaps you could add it to the  
patch manager on SourceForge:

     http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=4233&atid=304233

So we can keep track of it.  It's nice work, and we don't want to  
lose track.  I'd like to see it in a release soon.  I'm sure others  
will have some thoughts as well.

Please let us know what you think of the suggestions, and if you're  
up to implementing them.

Thanks and Regards,

Marty

P.S.  Do you have a SourceForge Account?  I'd be pleased to add you  
as an Etherboot developer so you can have access to Developer CVS.

> Regards to all and special thanks to Marty Connor to his  
> suggestions and
> David Aubin
> Ricardo Carrillo Cruz
> <Config.diff>
> <nic.diff>



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