Re: Is there a way to install DragonFly via network (w/o CD) ?

[esmith <esmith@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

George Georgalis wrote:
 it might be worthwhile poling that
> network for nameservers from dhcp, broadcast and ptr/arp, then a control
> panel could exclude mac addresses in dhcpd.conf, match subnet, spoof arp
> and get a bunch of IPs from the authoritative dhcp... maybe.

That's the right direction. I had thought about using broadcast to determine if 
another dhcp server was running and requesting that the user of our temporary dhcp 
server shut off the normal dhcp server before we would allow our dhcp server to start 
but, this idea of using broadcast to collect MAC addresses for filtering is what was 
missing.

How about this as an algorithm?

1) installer starts, and user selects pxeboot server ( or some other name )
2) installer broadcasts for dhcp servers, installer refuses to continue until other 
dhcp servers are shut  off
3) installer requests that all computers that desire to be pxebooted be shut off now, 
and waits for user input to continue
4) on user input, installer broadcasts and collects all MAC addresses of computers 
currently running
5) the installer adds these MAC addresses to dhcpd.conf and configures the 
installer's dhcp server so those MAC addresses never be served by the installer's dhcpd
6) the installer starts all needed services ( dhcpd, tftp, nfs )
7) the installer informs the user that any computers turned on now with a lan-boot 
option will be lan-booted from our installer's services
8) users lan-boot now, while any other computer whoose lease expires during this time 
will wait until the regular dhcp server starts again.
9) when all desired computers are finished lan-booting the user of the installer 
shuts off the lan-boot services, and informs the user of the installer that it is 
safe to restart the regular dhcp server
10) the installer user restarts the regular dhcp server and is now finished