Re: NetReg: A few NetReg/DHCP questions

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From: Jennifer Mehl (mehl@wi.mit.edu)
Date: Fri Jan 10 2003 - 08:39:09 CST


On Thursday, January 9, 2003, at 06:54 PM, Michael King wrote:

> Jennifer,
>
> Just a quick question on Point 2.
>
> How do you intend for the helpdesk worker to get the MAC address?

The HelpDesk staff would go to each machine, and go through the same
steps a user would-- set the computer up to use DHCP, get the "bogus"
lease, and then go to a separate registration page where they would
enter only the LDAP username of the person whose computer they are
registering. Then reboot the machine and get the new lease.

> NetReg, at it's simplest level, is just creating host entries in the
> ISC
> Dhcp server's dhcpd.conf file. The front-end webpages, pull the MAC
> address
> out automatically when a unregistered client hits the webpage.
> Do you intend for your users to bring the machines to the helpdesk?
> (this
> is the end result of where you seeming to be going)

Vice versa-- we'll be sending the Help Desk staff to the machines. :-)
  We're a fairly small institution compared to many of you (we have ~800
hosts) and we intend to do the DHCP roll-out over several months.

> I have created a webpage, that instead of Username / password for text
> boxes, it has MAC address and Username, but I protect this page, and
> only
> use it when I'm manually entering a device that cannot display a
> webpage. I
> do not allow my helpdesk desk to access it, mainly because I did not
> create
> any error checking for it, so the potential for a non-valid entry to
> take
> down the server exists.

A web page like that would also be useful to us for registration of
machines without web browsers, etc. Would you be willing to share your
code with us?

>
> Mike
>

Thanks again,
Jennifer

>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-netreg@southwestern.edu
> [mailto:owner-netreg@southwestern.edu]On Behalf Of Jennifer Mehl
> Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 4:24 PM
> To: netreg@southwestern.edu
> Subject: NetReg: A few NetReg/DHCP questions
>
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I've got the LDAP authentication working well with NetReg. What a
> great piece of software-- thanks to all who contributed to the code!
>
> I have a few more questions for you all:
>
> 1) Is anyone encrypting the communications between the NetReg scripts
> and the LDAP server using SSL? If so, could you explain how to set
> this up?
>
> 2) For our initial DHCP roll-out, our Help Desk will be registering
> machines. I'd like to modify the LDAP registration model so that the
> Help Desk staff can sit at the computer to be registered, enter only
> the LDAP username of the person since they obviously do not have
> passwords. This would allow us to register machines ourselves at the
> beginning, and then roll it out to users after the initial deployment
> is finished.
>
> Any suggestions? Is anyone doing anything like this now?
>
> 3) Is anyone doing DHCP failover with their NetReg boxes? I'm curious
> how to set this up so that the known host info in dhcpd.conf would be
> replicated to the second box. Are you all putting NetReg on the
> secondary/backup DHCP box as well? Just curious how you all are doing
> this.
>
> Thanks in advance for your feedback and ideas.
>
> Sincerely,
> Jennifer
> ---
> Jennifer Mehl
> Network Engineer, IT - Network Services
> Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (MIT)
> 5 Cambridge Center
> Cambridge MA 02142
>
> 617.258.8930 voice
> 617.258.5121 fax
>
> mehl@wi.mit.edu
>
>
>

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