You need some form of hosname lookup to convert machine names to IP addresses. You'd normally achieve this with DNS or static entries in /etc/hosts. DHCP and DNS tie together, but are not the same thing.
Because you are using DHCP, your machines may change IP addresses (subject to certain configuration parameters that probably aren't of any real relevance). Therefore, entries in /etc/hosts are likely to be annoying and, in course, outdated. When chickie obtains an ip address from the DHCP server, it can (and presumably does) send the name it would like to use. What DHCP can do is provide an update to a DNS server running a dynamic dns service. Now, you don't want to go through the process of setting up BIND9 as your nameserver in order to achieve this. I use a nice little tool called dnsmasq which can handle dynamic dns updates from DHCP, no fuss. If you are setting up a small network then chances are you'll want to have one box act as the gateway to the larger network. Dnsmasq can handle all your networks dns requests. Seb On Wed, 2002-11-13 at 16:43, Alan L Tyree wrote: > Hi, > I'm trying to switch my small network over to dhcp instead of fixed > addresses. I have it working, but there is still one question: > > According to Webmin the machine chickie is assigned 192.168.1.100 and > indeed when I ping that number it responds. But if I > > ping chickie > > it responds ping: unknown host chickie > > Obviously need to add something - what is is? > > Thanks, > Alan > -- > ------------------------------------------------------ > Alan L Tyree [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/~alant > Tel: +61 2 4782 2670 > Mobile: +61 419 638 170 > Fax: +61 2 4782 7092 > > -- > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ > More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
