On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 10:47 AM, Roger Searle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> Nick Rout wrote: >>>> >>>> What would be the best way of providing dns for the local network - can >>>> IPCop do it? If so how? I'm missing something... >>>> >>> >>> yes, allocate all the machines a fixed ip address via dhcp, and put >>> all the host names into hosts (this is all done via the ipcop gui). >>> >>> >> >> ok thanks - i was partly doing that before. i'll do that for all the >> machines now. >> so is this all that needs to be done for having dnsmasq via ipcop? the >> documentation is sketchy (or i didn't look in the right place) on this. >> >> > > dnsmasq is supposed to be able to resolve hostnames simply by having > dished an ip address to the dhcp client, but I don't find it > reliable[1]. I am not sure why, so I set it up the way I described > above, and it worked fine. A tiny bit more work, but not unless you > are constantly adding new machines. > > > [1] not sure why this is, but I suspect its to do with whether the > client machine provides a hostname when negotiating its dhcp > transaction ,but I don't know enough to work it all out, and setting > up pre-allocated IP addresses and the hosts file worked well, so > didn't bother to find out. >
from the dnsmasq faq http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/docs/FAQ : Q: Names on the internet are working fine, but looking up local names from /etc/hosts or DHCP doesn't seem to work. A: Resolver code sometime does strange things when given names without any dots in. Win2k and WinXP may not use the DNS at all and just try and look up the name using WINS. On unix look at "options ndots:" in "man resolv.conf" for details on this topic. Testing lookups using "nslookup" or "dig" will work, but then attempting to run "ping" will get a lookup failure, appending a dot to the end of the hostname will fix things. (ie "ping myhost" fails, but "ping myhost." works. The solution is to make sure that all your hosts have a domain set ("domain" in resolv.conf, or set a domain in your DHCP server, see below fr Windows XP and Mac OS X). Any domain will do, but "localnet" is traditional. Now when you resolve "myhost" the resolver will attempt to look up "myhost.localnet" so you need to have dnsmasq reply to that name. The way to do that is to include the domain in each name on /etc/hosts and/or to use the --expand-hosts and --domain options. Q: How do I set the DNS domain in Windows XP or MacOS X (ref: previous question)? A: for XP, Control Panel > Network Connections > { Connection to gateway / DNS } > Properties > { Highlight TCP/IP } > Properties > Advanced > DNS Tab > DNS suffix for this connection:
