Excerpts from netbsd: 18-Jun-97 Re: README: changes to conf.. Ted
Lemon@hoffman.vix.co (1738)

> If the BOOT proms provided this sort of support, this would be a
> reasonable thing to do.

Well, we have to write it...

> > -Can the filename field in requests be used by the DHCP server?
> >   (I like the semantics to look up first <filename>.<hostname> and
> >   fall back to <filename>.)
> 
> If you can document how this is supposed to work, and convince me that
> it's reasonable, then I can implement it.   From what you've said so
> far, I'm not sure what you mean.

If no bootfile is given in bootptab and the client puts <filename> in
the request, the server looks for <filename>.<hostname> in
<tftpdir>/<homedir>. If such a file (world readable) is present,
<homedir>/<filename>.<hostname> is returned. Then the server looks
for <filename> only and returns that if present. If it doesn't find either, no
answer is sent.
(Makes only sense if the bootp server is the TFTP server.)
This allows for a "default configuration" to be sent if no more
specific configuration is needed. I'm using this feature for
OS/9 machines: they ask for "os9boot", for "inetdb" and for
"startup". Each of them can be generic or special.
As reference I only found the source... around line 776 in
usr.sbin/bootpd/bootpd.c.

I could imagine a more general solution: use the <filename> field
of the request as kind of key: If the client asks for, lets say, "os9boot",
it gets the bootfile path and server address for OS/9. If it asks for
"netbsd", a perhaps completely different answer is sent. This makes
sense for different embedded machines I have here (which can save
the bootfile name in flash).
This would alse solve the TFTP server vs NFS server problem: If eg
for "netbsd" is asked, the TFTP settings are returned. If for "root" is
asked, the NFS settings are sent.
However, we have to think of people with different DHCP servers.
Standard setups should work even with windows (brrrr) servers.

> How about passing as the root filesystem name ``froboz:/roots/myclient''?

Would be very logical, but requires a name lookup by the client.
(Or some ASCII conversion if numerix addresses are used.)

best regards
Matthias