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draft-provan-dhcp-options-dir-serv-00.txt
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don provan
INTERNET-DRAFT Novell, Inc.
13 November 1996
Expires 18 May 1997
DHCP Options for Novell Directory Services
draft-provan-dhcp-options-dir-serv-00.txt
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet Drafts are working
documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its Areas,
and its Working Groups. Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six
months, and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other
documents at any time. It is not appropriate to use Internet
Drafts as reference material, or to cite them other than as a
``working draft'' or ``work in progress.''
To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the
``1id-abstracts.txt'' listing contained in the internet-drafts
Shadow Directories on ds.internic.net (US East Coast),
nic.nordu.net (Europe), ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast), or
munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim).
Abstract
This document defines three new DHCP options for delivering
configuration information to clients of the Novell Directory
Services. The first option carries a list of NDS servers. The
second option carries the name of the client's NDS tree. The third
carries the initial NDS context. These three options provide an NDS
client with enough information to connect to an NDS tree without
manual configuration of the client.
1. Introduction
Novell Directory Services is a distributed, replicated,
hierarchical database of objects representing network resources
such as nodes, services, users, and applications. An NDS client
must be able to locate an NDS server in order to authenticate
itself to the network and gain access to the database. In addition,
the node's user is better served if the NDS client's attention is
focused on the area of the NDS database likely to be of the most
interest to the user.
Provan Expires 18 May 1997 [Page 1]
INTERNET-DRAFT DHCP Options for NDS 13 November 1996
This specification describes DHCP options [1] that carry NDS
information to TCP/IP clients of NDS. The first option, the NDS
Servers option, carries a list of NDS servers. The other two
options, the NDS Tree Name option and the NDS Context option,
provide the client with a default context within the NDS database.
2. NDS Servers Option
This option specifies one or more NDS servers for the client to
contact for access to the NDS database. Servers SHOULD be listed in
order of preference.
The code for this option is 85. The minimum length of this option
is 4 octets, and the length MUST be a multiple of 4.
Code Len Address 1 Address 2
+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+--
| 85 | n | a1 | a2 | a3 | a4 | a1 | a2 | a3 | a4 | ...
+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+--
3. NDS Tree Name Option
This option specifies the name of the NDS tree the client will be
contacting. The tree name is formatted as a string of 16-bit
Unicode characters, with each Unicode character transmitted in
network order (most significant byte first).
The code for this option is 86. Current implementations of NDS
limit tree names to 32 Unicode characters (64 bytes), but
implementations of this option are encouraged to support the
maximum possible length for the option: 254 bytes. The length MUST
be a multiple of 2.
Code Len NDS Tree Name
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+--
| 86 | n | uc1 | uc2 | uc3 | ...
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+--
4. NDS Context Option
This option specifies the initial NDS context the client should
use. The context is formatted as a string of 16-bit Unicode
characters, with each Unicode character transmitted in network
order (most significant byte first).
A single DHCP option can only contain 127 Unicode characters. Since
an NDS context name can be longer than that, this option can appear
more than once in the DHCP packet. The contents of all NDS Context
options in the packet should be concatenated as suggested in the
DHCP specification [2, page 23] to get the complete NDS context.
Provan Expires 18 May 1997 [Page 2]
INTERNET-DRAFT DHCP Options for NDS 13 November 1996
The code for this option is 87. The length of each individual
context option MUST be a multiple of 2. The maximum length for each
instance is 254, but, as just described, the option may appear more
than once if the desired NDS context is longer than 127 Unicode
characters. Current implementations of NDS limit contexts to 256
Unicode characters (512 bytes), but implementations are discouraged
from enforcing any specific maximum to the final concatenated NDS
context.
Code Len Initial NDS Context
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+--
| 87 | n | uc1 | uc2 | uc3 | ...
+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+--
References
[1] S. Alexander and R. Droms. DHCP Options and BOOTP Vendor
Extensions. draft-ietf-dhc-options-1533update-04.txt, May 1996.
[2] R. Droms. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol.
draft-ietf-dhc-dhcp-07.txt, May 1996.
Author's Address
Don Provan
Novell, Inc.
2180 Fortune Drive
San Jose, California, 95131
Phone: +1 408 577 8440
EMail: donp@Novell.Com
Provan Expires 18 May 1997 [Page 3]