Re: dhcp-based netboot over jumbo-frame network?

From: Chris Friesen
Date: Wed Apr 08 2009 - 18:10:52 EST


Rick Jones wrote:
Chris Friesen wrote:

We have an existing system that loads a bare kernel using tftp, then mounts a rootfs via NFS. The wrinkle is that this is on a jumbo-frame enabled network, so somehow the MTU needs to be set before mounting the rootfs.

Why? Is the NFS mount not TCP? If it is TCP, then the TCP MSS exchange will provide you cover as it will (should) cause TCP in the NFS server to segment to the MSS option your system with the then-smaller MTU sends.

I would think that only if the NFS mount is UDP that you would have a problem with the system initially booting with a small MTU.

Currently it uses the default, which is udp. I might be able to get them to try TCP. Thanks for the suggestion.

In a previous version we patched ipconfig.c to support the DHCP option to specify the MTU value, but I'm wondering about the "proper" way to do this on current kernels.

Was the change submitted to upstream and rejected?

The change was submitted (not by us) back in the 2.6.10 timeframe, and was rejected with the suggestion to use initramfs.

Chris
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