dhcp

[John Plummer <jcp@conecomp.com>]

Hi,
    Sorry to bother you with another newbie question but
hours searching man, info, HOWTO's and FAQ's wasn't
too revealing.
    I have a PC with both a Netgear and a 3Com Etherlink
II nic cards.  The Netgear is attached to a cablemodem
and uses DHCP.  The 3Com is fixed IP for the internal
LAN.  Both work under NT but I'm trying to switch to Debian.
    Loaded ver. 2.1 from the CD with dselect settings
stable main contrib.  Added the 3Com during installation
and later using modconf added a tulip module for the Netgear.
This was implied from an email thread about the Netgear NIC.
    The problem is first how to get DHCP up and running so
as not to have to switch back to the dark side to browse and
do email.  Running dpkg --list 'dhcp*' listed a few dhcp entries,
e.g. dhcp, dhcp-client, dhcp-beta, dhcpd, etc.  But both apt-get
install dhcp-client and using dselect (probably incorrectly) erred
out.  Can anyone point me to some docs on doing this?
    The second needed HOWTO would be setting up the
gateway for the LAN through the 3Com.  At this point, even
being pointed to the appropriate info, man or HOWTO would
be appreciated.
    First brush with OS has been impressive.  Brings back the
feeling of potential felt when discovering Sun's OS with
Openwindows years ago.  Except this time the pieces are
there and affordable.
jcp