Hello, I have been working on a problem for a week now and I just don't seem to be making much progress. In the name of "easy" I strayed down multiple alternate paths and just ended up with more issues that wasted days of work so I am returning back to the basics. I am hoping someone here can help as this is outside of my normal strengths (though I am obviously willing to learn).
I have posted questions for help elsewhere on the net, but as of right now I either have not received a response or the response was not useful to my end goal (not that it wasn't helpful as I have had a few nice people answer, just that I was informed that I would not get the results I was after). I originally requested help from the webmin team [1] and then a second group suggested I look into prepackaged distros. Since then I have installed everything from firewall distros to those that claim to be "united network platform" distros . While I have used some of these products in the past (or still do) I have not been able to achieve what I am after with them. Many have just left me more frustrated (ex: a few of the firewall distros do not support multiple subnets in their DHCP and forcing it in the config file breaks the distro scripts pretty bad). [1] http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=28165685 The end goal is this: * I would like a server that serves up DHCP and DNS on a isolated LAN that does *not* have internet connection (one Ethernet cable from servers to giant bank of switches). * There will be three subnets: one is manually assigned 10.1.1.x, the DHCP server will have 10.1.2.x, and the DHCP/TFTPd server will server DHCP on 10.1.3.x. * All hosts should resolve their hostnames (and FQDN's! ) in the DNS regardless of if they are assigned via DHCP, manually, or PXE booted. * I would _really_ like to have a second server that is "failover" in case the first goes down, but I need the first working before I worry about that. The first time I did this was with a minimal install of SL 6.1 + DVD (to manually install rpms as I needed them). I didn't know much of anything about DHCP/DNS and failed to get it to work. I then started reading about webmin and I got DHCP to work but not in conjunction with DNS. I have since read a lot about DNS and DHCP so I am not completely ignorant on how they work but I am still very inexperienced in DNS and still having issues getting basic functionality. Webmin was great getting me started, but I am finding it easier to edit the config files directly then to figure out how to try to force webmin to do something. I have a minimal 6.1 install with DHCP and BIND DNS. Setting up the DHCP is now pretty easy; I can reinstall the minimal OS and DHCP pretty quick now (it may not be 100% correct but it works). I still have not messed with the PXE booting on the DHCP yet, but I can get a system to receive a DHCP address on the 10.1.2.x network and talk to the systems I manually set on the 10.1.1.x and 10.1.3.x networks. Right now, DNS (using the named service BIND provides) still doesn't work right. The closest I have gotten was by accident. Some how (not sure how as it was an accident) I managed to get the DNS server to work with the DHCP server. So the two systems that were setup to get a 10.1.2.x DHCP addresses could ping each other by hostname only. EG: `ping host1` and `ping host2` would work and it claimed it was resolving to 'host1.project.local' but `ping host1.project.local` would fail as hostname not found. Not only was this by accident, but it was REALLY slow. It was at least 10 seconds from the command being run to the first ping. However, none of the other systems were resolvable and they couldn't resolve the DHCP systems. I restarted the named service and then it all stopped working. I can't ping anyone by host name anymore. When BIND really started peeving me off, I looked into alternatives. I kinda got dnsmasq working. However, I had to manually assign every mac address with a IP in /etc/ethers and then manually add a hostname and IP in /etc/hosts. Also, it was /really/ slow as well (probably my fault for lack of experience). I realize I am probably going to have to manually manage each MAC, hostname, IP for the PXE booting systems but I don't want to have to manage all the servers (10.1.1.x) and desktops (10.1.2.x) as well. I would much rather have this managed by the DNS server and it needs to be flexible if I do get a secondary failover system working (I don't consider hard coding every MAC, host, and IP on two systems very flexible). I have since moved back to messing with BIND. Does anyone have any suggestions for me? Is there a better method to this then what I am doing? Should I be doing something different? I really didn't think this project was going to be as complicated as it has turned out to be. I have learned a lot so far, but it doesn't feel like I have made much progress after a week of this. There are a lot of tutorials on getting BIND to work with internet servers but I have not found much in having BIND ignore all but local servers. Maybe I am using the tools improperly to do something I shouldn't or maybe I am just using the wrong tools. In either case, I would greatly appreciate some input from someone who knows a bit more about these things. Thanks! ~Stack~
