[ipxe-devel] Incorrect next-server (QIP + Microsoft RIS/WDS)

[Tim Wright]

Hi Michael,

Firstly thanks for the prompt response - appreciated! Comments in-line...

> Why is the QIP server providing a next-server address at all?  It sounds
as
> though in your setup you are wanting the next-server and filename to be 
> provided only by the RIS/WDS server.

Spot on. We have been running this configuration for nigh on 10 years, as
unfortunately as with many large enterprises (30,000+ servers) the DHCP/DNS
team is in a different country (and chain of command) to the server/OS
engineering teams. Fixing this may not be as easy as I'd hoped -- I am
curious as to why we wouldn't have seen this before though?

> The easiest fix (if you can do it) would be to stop the QIP server from
> handing out its apparently spurious next-server address.

I wasn't even aware that it did until I stumbled across this issue and
setup a sniffer. Looking through the ISC dhcpd configuration guide, the
next-server directive defaults to the IP address of the DHCP server itself
if not specified. I guess we could experiment with hard-coding the
next-server to 0.0.0.0 or something to see if gPXE ignores it? Any ideas
here?

Lastly - excuse my ignorance but what's the difference between gPXE/iPXE?

Cheers,

Tim
--
Tim Wright
e: tim at binbash.co.uk