basic client setup plus name resolving from HW router

[Glenn Satchell]

>Date: Fri, 12 May 2006 17:02:25 -0700
>From: Olivier Schreiber <olivierschreiber at comcast.net>
>To: dhcp-users at isc.org
>Subject: basic client setup plus name resolving from HW router
>
>
>Hello there,
>My question is so generic that I have trouble doing a search for it.
>
>I have a home lan with an SMC7004WBR wireless router.
>I installed Debian Linux a few months ago along with dhcp package
>and adjusting anything, I got leases for the two machines which
>had linux on it: `omnibook' and `kayak'.
>I did not spend the effort to try to find out how to address each
>machine from each other except by their IP addresses leased out by
>dhcp so I do:
>kayak$rlogin 192.168.123.144
>to access omnibook from kayak and
>omnibook$rlogin 192.168.123.148
>to access kayak from omnibook
>
>So now I want to set things up properly without hardcoding the /etc/hosts
>files with the IP addresses above to be able to do:
>kayak$rlogin omnibook
>to access omnibook from kayak and
>omnibook$rlogin kayak
>to access kayak from omnibook
>
>
>I am clueless about what additional package --if any-- I need to install
>to accomplish that.
>
>I have dhcp3-client and dhcp3-common
>I don't think I need dhcpcd because my understanding is that the
>hardware router is the dhcp server in my situation.
>But do I need autodns-dhcp? or bind9? or resolvconf?
>
>I know my problem is very generic but don't know what to read for that
>reason.
>Thanks in advance!
>
>-- 
>Olivier Schreiber OSchreiber.ae90 at gtalumni.org H323 464 5818
>
Hi Olivier

What you need is a DNS server, and you need a DHCP server that can do
dynamic DNS updates when a new lease is handed out. To use the ISC dhcp
server you will need whatever Debian package provides that plus a DNS
server, bind version 9 is recommended. Details for configuring dynamic
DNS are in the man page for named.conf, along with configuration
examples for dhcpd.conf and named.conf.

Alternatively, you could configure the dhcp server in your router to
hand out a fixed address to each of your clients. Then you could simply
put entries in /etc/hosts for each system.

For a small home LAN I'd recommend the latter approach unless of course
you want to learn how to do DDNS and apply that knowledge somewhere
else, such as work, for example ...

regards,
-glenn