Re: dhcp

[Micha Feigin <michf@post.tau.ac.il>]

On Mon, 2003-11-03 at 12:15, Robert Storey wrote:
> I've had my LAN working well for a long time using static IP addresses
> (specified in /etc/hosts).
> 
> Now I would like to play with dhcp, but I found the info in the Debian
> reference manual  pretty minimal and I admit I don't really know what
> I'm doing. But this is what I've done so far:
> 
> On both machines (desktop and laptop) I installed Debian packages "dhcp"
> and "dhcp-client". I edited /etc/default/dhcp like this...
> 
>   INTERFACES="eth0"
> 
> ...and then rebooted. The boot-up messages indicate the server is
> starting. Remember that this is on both machines - perhaps that isn't
> correct and I should only run the server on one? Anyway, one machine has
> a hostname ibm.utopia.com and the other is sonic.utopic.com. From sonic,
> typing "ping ibm" produces the message "ping: unknown host ibm" (ditto
> for the fully qualified host name). Without the benefit of /etc/hosts
> I'm not sure how the server is going to know the names of the clients.
> 

You want only one server on each network or otherwise you will get IP
clashes as each server keeps track of the IPs it supplied and when a new
machine asks for an IP it will get it from the first server that bothers
to answear. All the other computers only need the dhcp client (pump is
another program for the same job, don't know which is better).
The hostname/domain are supplied from a DNS server (look into bind 8 or
9).
The dhcp server can update the dns server as to the dynamically supplied
IPs.

> Any help would be appreciated. Even pointing me to a FAQ or other online
> source would be cool.
> 
> regards,
> Robert
-- 
Micha Feigin
michf@math.tau.ac.il