[debian-lan-devel] [PATCH] Reserved leases for member client machines

[Afif Elghraoui]

Hi, Andi,

I apologize for the delay; I'm currently traveling. Many thanks for 
testing my patch!

On 2016-09-17 09:12, Andreas B. Mundt wrote:
> Hi Afif,
> 
> On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 12:12:48AM -0700, Afif Elghraoui wrote:
>> على الخميس 15 أيلول 2016 ‫06:24، كتب Andreas B. Mundt:
>> 
>> > I just applied your patch to an 'experimental' branch.  I'll test the
>> > modifications as soon as possible, and after that we might want to
>> > merge it into master.
> 
> […]
> 
> Just a few observations I made so far with the new setup:
> 
>  •  In general, I like the simplification of the code:  Less code
>     means less to maintain.
> 
> Problems:
> 
>   • I installed a first workstation, workstation00.  The machine
>     installs fine.  However, it ended up as workstation01.  This
>     happens because when booting vi PXE, it gets the first IP-Address,
>     (10.0.1.100, pxeconfig file  0A000164 is created fine from the
>     template), the kernel boots and configures the NIC: it's assigned
>     the next IP-Adress: 10.0.1.101  (10.0.1.101, pxeconfig file
>     0A000165 is created fine from the template).

The first hostname ends up as workstation01 rather than workstation00 
because the code I used to increment variables increments a null value 
(which is what gets set when no previous workstations have been defined) 
directly to 1. I didn't think this would be a major problem, but this 
behavior can be changed if necessary.

>   • After installation, the machine boots again into installation
>     mode (not sure if this was intended, I thought the idea was to
>     switch to local boot after successful installation with 'chboot -o
>     <IP>' automatically).

I did not (intentionally) make any changes to this aspect of the system. 
I would prefer setting PXE to local boot after successful installation 
as well, but you had said the static PXE configuration was intentional 
because the Debian LAN use case was for the hard disk to be the default 
boot priority [1].


>   • Every boot overwrites the pxe-configuration again, if you modify
>     it manually, this has no effect.

Hm; I wonder if this is because I misunderstood what value should be set 
to denote "infnite" in the lease time. Maybe -1 ended up getting 
interpreted as 0, so the lease continuously expired. The word "infinite" 
itself might do the trick instead of -1, but the only way to know for 
sure is to ask on isc-dhcp-users because it's not mentioned in the 
manpage.

>   • The krb5.keytab has been copied to the installation system but is
>     missing on the installed machine (probably not related to the
>     modifications, has been an issue before).
> 

I'll have to see. I was mostly focused on my changes.

> Perhaps we should first think about what we want to achieve.  A first
> idea:
> 
>   We need add a machine to the system.  This is done with 'debian-lan
>   add2dhcp'.  Best case:  this is all needed, and nothing more.
>   However, a simple way to re-install is also necessary.
> 
> Hm, I'm thinking about it.  Any ideas?
> 

Well, since we agree that setting PXE to localboot after installation is 
a good idea, we can do fai-chboot -o after installation. Then, to set 
PXE to reinstall, the admin would have to recopy the template: 
fai-chboot -c workstation.tmpl worstationXX

> PS.:  ToDo:  - We have to make the keytab-distribution more robust.
>              - For me, automounting the home directory also fails
>                currently (even with keytab in place … )
> 

Yeah, maybe I can look into this.

Thanks and regards
Afif


1. 
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-lan-devel/2015q1/000782.html