PXE? about staticdhcpd

[flan]

It does, but I've never actually had a PXE device myself, so everything has had to go through VirtualBox.

It's been a while since I last worked with it (my job is relatively networking-light these days), but I can try to help you with any configuration difficulties you may be having and try to make the documentation clearer based on the gap.

[jsumners]

Some documentation would be nice. I don't have the first clue how to configure PXE booting with staticDHCPd.

[flan]

Sorry, this got buried and I just noticed it again now.

http://static.uguu.ca/projects/staticDHCPd/doc/customisation/configuration.html#proxy-port-integer-none-default-none should be all you need to set to enable what's commonly referred to as PXE. I'll add that as a keyword to the section to make searching easier.

[jsumners]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Execution_Environment#Integration

So if I'm understanding correctly, staticDHCPd is relying on a separate DHCP server to be running on the port identified by PROXY_PORT. That separate server would provide the path to the boot file.

I was looking for support to configure DHCP options 66 and 67 -- https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2132 (sections 9.4 and 9.5).

[flan]

No, it will provide service on that port if configured. If not, it leaves that port alone in case another server is providing ProxyDHCP support. (And because I don't believe it's a good idea to open ports unnecessarily)

If you want to use sname (or 68 -- the DHCP option is an alternative to the BOOTP field and many older/simpler clients will only check for the field) and file (or 67 -- same thing here), a separate TFTP server will be needed to actually serve the file.

To set these field values, define the function described at http://static.uguu.ca/projects/staticDHCPd/doc/customisation/scripting.html#loaddhcppacket . your client may be able to pull the required information out of a packet sent over the traditional port-67/68 exchange, but many explicitly check for a response on 4011, which you can determine and specifically configure based on the port argument passed to that function.

A more comprehensive explanation was written in the documentation a few years ago, when this was implemented: http://static.uguu.ca/projects/staticDHCPd/doc/commentary/setups.html#pxe-support
It might do a better job of explaining the process than my memory can do in this response right now.

[flan]

The documentation, which includes full object references (in case you need to do anything unusual with the packet instances or something) is linked from the project's front page: https://github.com/flan/staticdhcpd#documentation

libpydhcpserver is where most types and constants exist, while staticDHCPd defines most of the processing logic.