static ip to dhcp conversion -- getting a hostname

[John Schmidt <jaschmidt@uofu.net>]

Hi,

My university is switching everyone over from a static ip to one assigned via 
dhcp.  In addition, they are specifying the hostname for each of these 
addresses.  Unfortunately, we don't get an option to choose a hostname.  It 
seems that the current mechanism within Debian is to specify a hostname 
regardless of how a ip is assigned.  I would prefer to assign my own 
host-name, but don't have that luxury.

I am using dhcp3-client to pull the ip number and other assorted information.  
However, I can't get a hostname returned from the dhcp server.  I have set 
the option in dhclient.conf to request host-name (along with some other 
options).  I have turned on the debugging flags in the 
dhclient-{enter,exit}-hooks.d/ to see what info is gathered from the server.  
Hostname is not one of the pieces of information that is returned.  

I am assuming that the dhcp server is actually sending out hostnames, but am 
not 100% confident.  I can take the returned address and do a nslookup to 
actually get the hostname, but this seems like a kludge.  Are there any known 
problems with getting a hostname from a dhcp server that I am overlooking?

Michael Ash had asked a similar question back in Oct 2003 (debian-user 
archives), and someone responded, but it didn't appear like there was any 
definite solution.
 
Thanks for any help.

John