DHCP Questions

[John Kinne <[e-mail]>]

Hello all

Two weeks ago I did not know what DHCP nor BOOTP was (well, I
knew a bit about BOOTP).  I have read the FAQs and quite a bit
more since then; and I have been subscribed to this list since
about then.

I do not have a good sense of the theme of this group, please
let me know if there is a better forum for my questions.

Miami University is planning to have most/many resident halls
networked by Fall Semester.  Students will be able to connect
their desktops to the e-net.

I would like to build an automatic configuration 'diskette' for
them.  It would

  Ask the student for a personal name

  (Perhaps) ask the student for a unique ID (everyone at Miami has one,
  but not everyone knows it!).

  Ask the student for some sort of verification code (assigned when
  the student comes to campus, they tend to know the code!)

  Grab the MAC address

  Load IPX & required drivers/pgms onto the student's harddisk

  Establish a connection to a server (perhaps Novell)

  Communicate this info to a server.

  Download other pgms from server as appropriate.

The server would

  Verify that the student was the same as claimed (verification code)

  (Perhaps) verify that the student qualified for network services
  (was not a criminal, paid a fee, right major code, something....)

  Build a DHCP entry for the student

  Indicate success or failure to the diskette program

If I can have a fence around my world I would also like to grab an
inventory of the student's machine and put it in our help-desk
database.

Has anyone done something like this?

I need to support WIN31, Macintoshs, WIN95, and probably others.

Your advice is appreciated,

John Kinne
Miami University