[ipxe-devel] Adding lldp-agent to ipxe

[Robin Smidsrød]

On 12.09.2013 08:24, Thomas Mieslinger wrote:
> it would be helpful for my tasks, if I could know the switchport the
> computer is connected to, during the execution of ipxe.

The first step in trying to get any feature into ipxe is to explain how
you'd use it (e.g. in a script), and what use-case it solves for you.

I can see the value in LLDP information being available, and it would
make sense to expose it as an information scope beneath each network
device (similar to DHCP/ProxyDHCP). What values from LLDP are you
primarily interested in? Just the switch port, or something else as
well? Naming the variables is always tricky, as the name cascades down
to the global scope, and overlapping names can cause scripting issues
(as we saw with builtin/version).

Once a proper syntax has been decided you'd have to come up with a patch
that implements that behavior (unless you can convince someone else to
do it for you).

> Has anyone ever tried to add lldpagent to ipxe? Is the license of ipxe
> compatible with the MIT License of http://vincentbernat.github.io/lldpd/?

I believe it is possible to include MIT-licensed code into a GPL
codebase, from what I've seen at tldrlegal.com. Not sure if we'd want to
use any of the code from lldpd, though. Small code size is of paramount
importance in iPXE, and most other non-embedded projects care little for
that.

-- Robin