Re: Multiple interfaces

[Bob Edwards <Robert.Edwards@anu.edu.au>]

Ken Yap wrote:
> 
> >I am hoping that it will send out the BOOTP requests on all interfaces
> >and listen to responses on all, then go with the interface that it
> >receives a reply on.
> 
> And I would like to add that I consider sending out on multiple interfaces
> wrong behaviour. What you are making is a bootrom, which is meant to be
> used on a specific card. It should not attempt to use other hardware.
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I guess I sort of agree. I am building a beowulf with 96 dual CPU machines.
Each machine will have 3 100MBit network cards, only one of which will connect
back to the boot server machine. For routing reasons, I don't necessarily
want this to be the same Linux device (eth0, eth1, eth2) on each machine,
yet I would like to keep the machines as identical as possible wrt to other
hardware considerations. For this reason, I was hoping to be able to broadcast
on all interfaces at the boot stage so I don't need to know which interface
is connected back to the boot server.

Still, I can see in most other applications, this would not be desirable
behaviour (eg. a router).

As regards bootroms, I am hoping not to have a bootrom on any card, but
mangled into the motherboard BIOS. In fact, the network cards I am considering
(Netgear FS 310TX, based on a DEC Tulip clone) don't even have sockets for
boot roms, although sockets could be added with some work (x 96 machines).
The other alternative is to add a floppy drive to each machine (96 floppies!)
and run the etherboot code from there. This could even be cheaper than boot
roms.

I can work around the current behaviour, now that I have a clearer idea of
what it is.

Cheers and thanks for all the help,

Bob Edwards.
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