[ipxe-devel] [gPXE-devel] Incrementing DHCP "secs" field

Michael Brown mbrown at fensystems.co.uk
Thu Mar 24 03:50:36 UTC 2011


On Wednesday 16 Feb 2011 12:43:04 Nicolas Bourbaki wrote:
> I'd like to request a feature to improve the default behavior of gPXE.
> I noticed that some DHCP implementations uses the "secs" field as a
> threshold value. In order for your DHCPDiscover to be transmitted to
> the DHCP server the router will check the value of the "secs" field in
> your DHCP packet, if the value is below a threshold, then the packet
> is discarded. By default, gPXE does not increment this counter which
> leave clients without an IP address. In order to improve the gPXE
> experience in an existing network I'd like to see this implemented.
> 
> You'll find attached a patch which may seem "naive" but works as expected.

Thanks for the feature suggestion!  Please try upgrading to iPXE 
(http://ipxe.org), which already increments the "secs" field, and so should 
work correctly in your network with no modifications required.

You should upgrade to iPXE anyway, since it is actively maintained; it's just 
a happy coincidence that your particular feature request has already been 
implemented in iPXE.  :)

Also, sorry about the extended delay in responding; I have only just received 
your message.  I believe the gPXE project infrastructure (including the 
mailing lists) has been broken for over a month now.

(Redirected to the ipxe-devel at lists.ipxe.org mailing list, which works.)

Michael



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