DHCP-options (170, etc) in FAI

[Mathias Friman]

Hi everyone.

I'm currently in Eritrea on the North-east coast of Africa
setting up a school network in a remote part of the country.

We use refurbished computers and a half-thin-client concept
to run X-terminals on a rather much more powerful server.

The system was thought to be installed using FAI, but I am
unable to get the FAI-DHCP-options to be registered properly 
during installation, and it is thus only possible to get to 
the point where FAI mounts the /fai-directory. All but the 
FAI specific options seem to register nicely, but this has
probably something to do with the versions I'm using.

Debian 3.0r0 (woody) (not at all upgraded)
ISC DHCP Client version 2.0pl5-11
ISC DHCP Server version 3.0+3.0.1rc9-2
FAI Version 2.3.1
FAI Kernels 1.2

My /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf looks like this:

---
[snip]
# Define the FAI-specific options 170-172
option option-170 code 170 = string;
option option-171 code 171 = string;
option option-172 code 172 = string;

option option-170 [hostname]:/usr/share/local/fai;   # FAI_LOCATION
option option-171 "sysinfo";                         # FAI_ACTION
option option-172 "verbose createvt sshd";           # FAI_FLAGS
[snap]
---

and my dhclient.conf in /usr/lib/fai/nfsroot looks like:

---
[snip]
option option-170 code 170 = string;
option option-171 code 171 = string;
option option-172 code 172 = string;

# fai configuration for dhclient

request

  subnet-mask, domain-name-servers, domain-name,
  host-name, routers, time-servers, ntp-servers,
  nis-domain, nis-servers, tftp-server-name,

  option-170, option-171, option-172, option-173, option-174;
[snap]
---

The options seems to be transmitted, but are set in hexadecimal
numbers instead of clear text. One can examine them in the logfiles 
that are created, like in dhcp.log on the install client:

T171='67:75:67:..etc'

If I set the options to "= text;" there will not be any
FAI specific options defined in the log at all..

I know that I am using an old version of FAI, but it would be
neat to get some input on this issue that doesn't involve upgrading
to anything that is not in the woody (3.0r0) cd-edition, since
I am currently unable to reach the internet but occasionally..

I was previously using BOOTP, but since I want to be able to use
dynamic DNS updates, this is no longer my preferred choice.

This is probably a DHCP issue, but I welcome all possible input
on this problem.

Kind Regards,
Mathias Friman 
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