[ale] DHCP, Linux and Win95

[Andrew Newton]

I finally got the the Bootp-DD 2.4.3 server running.  It's
amazing what you can learn when you turn debugging on.  And
once again, to show how free software rules, I found a bug
in the server that was causing my problem.

For anyone interested, change the line in the bootpd.c files
get_dynamic() function that reads:
                        dynamic_hosts=data[0];
to:
                        dynamic_hosts=(u_char)(data[0]);

Even without the simple fix, the server will still dynamically
allocate addresses in chunks of 127.  This fix allows the chunks
to go up to 254.

And for the record, the patched CMU server with dynamic allocation
(Bootpd-DD v2.4.3) works on Linux systems with more than one NIC
and doesn't require the special addition of a 255.255.255.255 static
route.
                      
dZothMuellarg wrote:
> 
> ^Using a network analyzer, I can see the Win95 machines making
> ^the Bootp request, but the Linux box never replies.  But
> ^oddly enough, when setup to work with inetd, the bootpd
> ^gets launched.  One thing that might be causing problems
> ^is that this Linux box has two NIC's in it, the first with
> ^just one interface on it, and the second with three interfaces
> ^on it (eth1:0, eth1:1, and eth1:2).  To make things more
> ^difficult, the requests are coming from eth1:1.
> 
> This is list in both documents as bad, for the one I used it points out:
> 
>   It also runs on Ultrix, QNX and Linux as long as only one network
>   interface is present and a host route is added from that interface to
>   the 255.255.255.255 broadcast address.
> 
> Some Linux systems work better with:
> 
>         route add -host 255.255.255.255 dev <your-interface-name>



-- 
Andrew Newton
lfs at eskimo.com 
www.eskimo.com/~lfs