[gPXE] sanbootconf hostname setting

[Michael Brown]

On Saturday 20 March 2010 19:30:02 Shao Miller wrote:
> Seems like it could be useful for the non-domain-member scenario, but I
> still say the right way to choose your hostname is to use Windows to set
> it; just too many unknowns for me.  I have a bit of a hard time
> understanding why you'd really want to use this, though...  If you're
> booting computer A from SAN X, it's a one-to-one relationship.  If
> you're booting computer B from SAN X and want computer B's name to be
> different, you could not use SAN X for both computers A and B
> simultaneously, so why change the hostname?  If you've got copy-on-write
> or some other delta system and computers A and B connect to SANs X and Y
> (derived from Z) respectively, why not have a one-time computer rename
> using the Windows interface?  The only answer I can perceive would be
> "stateless clients at each boot".  That's where this could be useful, in
> my opinion...

Thanks for the feedback.  Stateless clients at each boot is the only scenario 
I could think of, too.

I'm inclined to agree with most of what you say; I feel uncomfortable letting 
sanbootconf attempt to hack a computer name change.  However, I think it 
would be useful if sanbootconf could store the hostname *somewhere* in the 
registry; this would allow a user who wants auto-renaming machines to 
implement it without requiring specific knowledge of the iBFT.

For example, suppose that Windows has separate concepts of "computer name" 
and "TCP/IP hostname".  If so, then sanbootconf could legitimately set just 
the TCP/IP hostname.  A user could then choose to have a startup script that 
checks the TCP/IP hostname against the computer name, and kicks off a rename 
and domain rejoin procedure if they differ.  (I remember scripting something 
like this for NT4 many years ago.)

Do you know if Windows separates the concepts of "computer name" and "TCP/IP 
hostname"?  From the fact that we have the two separate registry entries

  CCS\Control\ComputerName\ComputerName\ComputerName

and

  CCS\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Hostname

it looks as though this may be the case, but I don't know without testing it.

As a related question, when Windows uses DHCP, does it honour DHCP option 12 
in any way?

Michael