mgb wrote:
List,

I have a 4.1 GENERIC machine acting as DHCP server, serving out IP addresses to 7 diskless client machines. Each client machine needs to be pushed a different configuration file in order to start a process once booted. There is a chance that any number of clients may be replaced at any time.

My initial thinking was to define a range of 7 IP addresses in dhcpd.conf so when the client has got an IP it can then request a file named as the clients IP address from the server. However if a client needs replacing the new client will dhcp for an address but dhcpd will complain (justifiably) that there are no spare addresses (the lease-time being 1 day).


since these clients are probably wired, why not lower the lease time to, say, 30 minutes? this would allow you to rotate machines pretty easily and have the new one pickup shortly after the old one is removed. depends on how quickly you're planning to rotate the dhcp clients. 30 minutes of time between disconnecting one (maybe b/c it's broken?) and reconnecting another to take its place seems reasonable.

if this doesn't cut it fish around for a way to terminate dhcp leases as a function of whether the diskless services are active for a given client. maybe RADIUS could be helpful... don't have much experience here.

cheers,
jake

So if I defined a large pool of IP addresses in dhcpd.conf that would avert the problem described above, however I'm struggling to think of a solution on how would clients would request the correct configuration file? and how could I handle new clients replacing broken ones with regard to dishing out the correct configuration file?

Apologies for such woolly posting, I'm just hoping for some inspired ideas.

Thanks for your time

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