Collecting Ethernet adresses necessary?

[Michael Tautschnig]

[...]
> 
> Question 1:
> Chapter 3.5 "Collecting Ethernet addresses" in the FAI Guide describes
> that it is necessary to collect the MAC addresses and assign hostnames
> and IP addresses to them.
> I don't care about the IP address during installation (the IP addresses
> will be changed afterwards anyway). The hostname should always be the
> same for a machine in a class (either "system1" or "system2"). Is there
> a way to omit the step "Collecting MAC addresses"?
> 
You need not care about MAC addresses, if you do not need them for DHCP/BOOTP
setups, but usually MAC addresses provide a convenient way to assign a hostname
to a specific machine.

> Question 2:
> The hardware for machines for "system1" class and "system2" class is
> exactly the same. If the faiserver has two network interfaces, is it
> possible to use both network interfaces for FAI installation in a way
> that machines, that are connected to eth0 on the faiserver will be in
> class "system1" and machines, that are connected to eth1 on the
> faiserver will be in class "system2"?
> Any other ideas on how to differentiate two types of systems when the
> hardware is the same and I do not want to rely on MAC/IP address based
> mechanisms?
>

IMHO there are two different approaches available:
- start your client using a boot floppy or boot cd (or, even better, a fai-cd)
  and assign a hostname or set some variable in the kernel command line.
- rely on the IP/MAC addresses of your fai-server, e.g., disallow ICMP-echo from
  eth0 to the IP of eth1 and vice-versa. Then, within one of your early
  class-scripts, try to ping both IPs and conclude from that.

HTH,
Michael
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