Dhcpd-plugin

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Revision as of 09:14, 19 March 2007 by Jerry finn (Talk | contribs)

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How it works

It's a very simple script, it continuously greps /var/log/syslog looking for DHCPREQUEST/DHCPACK lines.

When finding one it tries to find out if it's a new device (not one already added and not one to be ignored). Then it sends DCE Event #53(New Mac Address Detected) with params #5(MAC) and #28(IP) to DCERouter.

As far as I know then it's processed somewhere in General_Info_Plugin (asking for device type, room and other such stuff), after that it creates a device with status set to **RUN_CONFIG**.

After that somebody else will run the configuration script specified in DeviceTemplate. Something like:

/usr/pluto/bin/configure_snom3xx.pl -d 47- i 192.168.80.253 -m 00:04:13:24:25:e9

That script is responsible to correctly configure Snom320, so it could be used almost immediately.

New p&p devices

For each device that needs to be plug&play device, we need to:

  • create a device template
  • add a MAC range in the device template to include such devices
  • create a script, as described above, that will be called that will configure the device to be used with LinuxMCE

Possible problems

  • Two or more models (with very different configurations) of same manufacturer share same IP range
Now it's solved by asking the user what kind of device he added via plug&play.
In future an auto detection script will be needed like the one deciding which Cisco phone we have, ie. 7960 or 7970, by getting the information from the phone itself, but it still will not be a perfect solution because it relies on certain firmware versions and/or default passwords.
  • Same model may have different firmwares, meaning that sometimes the configuration script may fail.
This can't be solved right now. Usually firmware is not distributable, so you can't force to use a specific version with LinuxMCE. The firmware upgrade needs user interaction and is very delicate operation that may result in trashed equipment (for example power outage in the middle of upgrade)