DHCPD and host names

[/dev/rob0]

gerard.mears at gmail.com wrote:
> Hi (this has got noobie all over it),

That it does, but you can learn. :)

> I have set up Mandrake 10 with DHCPD.  The clients are Windows XP and
> get an IP number correctly.  When I try to resolve names/IP from the XP
> clients everything works OK.  But when I try to resolve names from the
> Linux server it can't find the XP clients.

Welcome to the world of MS protocol confusion. Windows is using NetBIOS 
and/or WINS name resolution in addition to files and DNS.

> The dhcpd.leases file has the client host names correctly.  I havent
> set up NAMED yet, do I need this to make it work properly?  Can the

Yes, and you must also do so to have any remote hope of being on topic 
in this newsgroup / mailing list. :)

> DHCPD do local host name resolutions?  Is ther a simple NAMED (BIND)
> howto that explains how to get DNS to server local network addresses
> and cache the internet addresses?

BIND out of the box ... probably *any* box regardless of distributor ... 
will do Internet name caching. All you have to do is install and 
activate it. (Some packaging systems do this all in one.)

To serve your own zones, such as for a local network, is a bit more 
work. And the issue of configuring your DHCP daemon to update DNS is 
again offtopic here. But what the heck, here you go ... this is about 
all you should need in your dhcpd.conf:
ddns-update-style interim;

You have to set up your own master zones in named.conf to serve local 
names. I had a little sample tarball with dhcpd.conf and named.conf and 
sample zone files, but the original hard drive is offline ATM and I 
cannot find the URL to it. Drop me a line offlist and I'll send it to 
you when I get the machine with that file running again.

Another idea, depending how small your network is, is to look at 
dnsmasq. It's much simpler for newbies; you keep your zone data in your 
own /etc/hosts file. BIND is fun but has a much steeper learning curve.

And then you'd be WAY offtopic here. ;)
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