option 129 line length limit?

[lists@north.org]

option 129 length limit?

I'm using netboot and etherboot to boot a diskless linux
router with seven ethernet cards.  To enable me to do this
I need to configure all the cards.

I've user mknbi-linux to tag a kernel with the -a option
to tag a long line of 'ether=3,0x340,eth2' type boot
options.

I will have several (think 10 or more) of these routers
all with varying hardware, and don't really want to have
a separate kernel for each.

Looking at the mknbi man page I see I can use the 129 
vendor tag.  I tried this, and it works, except not all 
of the ethernet cards come up.

For comparison, here is the line I use to create the
tagged kernel with:

./mknbi -k /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/zImage -o /tmp/kernel.eth0-6.eth0 -a ether=4,0x280,eth0 ether=10,0x300,eth1 ether=5,0x2c0,eth2 ether=3,0x240,eth3 ether=15,0x2a0,eth4 ether=9,0x320,eth5 ether=11,0x340,eth6

and here is the line in dhcpd.conf

        #option option-129 "ether=4,0x280,eth0 ether=10,0x300,eth1 ether=5,0x2c0,eth2 ether=3,0x240,eth3 ether=15,0x2a0,eth4 ether=9,0x320,eth5 ether=11,0x340,eth6" ;

(Commented out for testing... apologies for the length of
those!)

Is there a length limit somewhere, either in mknbi or
in dhcpd?

Since writing the above, I have traced the packets on the network
and the dhcpd serves out the whole of the line, so my conclusions
that the diskless client isn't passing the whole line to the kernel
for booting?

This project isn't turning out easy, but I knew it wouldn't
be simple.  But I'll get there in the end!

All help appreciated.

Simon.

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