From: cspeidel@gmail.com
Date: Thu Jul 12 2007 - 10:28:13 ART
I have used this for PXE booting to image laptops. I had the router configured for DHCP to provide the client computer with an IP address, then the next-server option directed it to the PXE server I had which was a windows machine running a TFTP server that held the boot image to download to the client.
The PXE server uses DHCP to respond to client requests. So there is a problem running a regular DHCP server on the same box since it uses the same port. If the client were to go directly to the PXE server to request information the PXE server is acting as a DHCP proxy and responds with the destination of the PXE server and a client address of NULL. If a regular DHCP server received this it would respond giving the client an IP.
In the case of a regular DHCP server, the PXE client goes back with a special DHCP request (BINL) to get the filename of the bootstrap program-which it makes to the next-server address specified on the router.
In the case of using the PXE server, when the PXE client goes to make the special DHCP request the router sees the source as NULL instead of 0.0.0.0 or having an IP and sees this as a malformed packet and drops it. At least I think thats how it all works :)
This may help visualize http://www.pxe.ca/images/pxe.gif
It was quirky to set up, but I was able to image 3 pallets of laptops rather quickly with only 1 CD.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Aug 18 2007 - 08:17:40 ART
