maas-devel team mailing list archive

[Gavin Panella <gavin.panella@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

PXELINUX requires that TFTP servers support the tsize option [1], and
that is missing in python-tx-tftp.

However, I don't want to switch to an alternative TFTP implementation
because the code quality and test coverage is high in python-tx-tftp,
much higher than any alternative I've seen, and the upstream developer
is responsive.

It also implements the other half of the RFC in which tsize is
defined: timeout interval in RFC 2349 [2]. This means that most of the
support for tsize is already there.

I've spent some time today implementing tsize support, and it's going
quite well, but is not complete [3]. Some of my time has been spent
figuring out how to use git and GitHub, where python-tx-tftp is
hosted. I should be able to finish it tomorrow.

I then need to try it out in anger with vdenv to ensure that it works
as a drop-in replacement for the current TFTP server, before adding in
the dynamic PXE config rendering (already proven in part).

roaksoax will be packaging python-tx-tftp (thanks!), though
discussions about backports and/or SRUs are still outstanding (in
general for MAAS, not just here).

My hopes last week of having something for matsubara to QA in the
middle of this week are looking naive. Jeroen, Raphael, let's talk
tomorrow to see when we can deliver a minimally viable Cobbler-free
server to matsubara (and what it'll look like).

Cheerio until tomorrow!

Gavin.


[1] http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/PXELINUX
[2] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2349
[3] https://github.com/allenap/python-tx-tftp/tree/tsize-support