tempermental ip

[Randy]

Please excuse my long windedness.

I have one client that seams unable to hold the ip assigned to it.  The client 
is a toshiba laptop with vista on it.  I know about the broadcast issue with 
vista.  This problem does not seam to affect an acer laptop with vista 
however.

There should not be a signal strength issue because the access point is within 
20 feet, and no obstructions.  The access point is a Netgear router that is 
only functioning as a switch.  DHCP, DNS are both taken care of by a Debian 
Linux (lenny, no gui) powered firewall server.  It is using dhcp3-server 
version

Architecture: i386
Source: dhcp3
Version: 3.1.1-6+lenny3
Depends: debianutils (>= 2.8.2), dhcp3-common (= 3.1.1-6+lenny3), lsb-base, 
libc6 (>= 2.7-1), debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0

The ip is a static assignment from the dhcp server so that local  dns works.  
I don't know if the client has done anything to his vista install to 
disable/change the way it is handling the broadcast flag.

From my google searches I have seen that the dhcpd.conf file needs to have an 
entry 'server-identifier {server name}' that is pointed correctly before vista 
will work correctly.  I have an entry 'server-name {server-name}'.  Is that 
the same thing?

I have not tried the broadcast entry in the config file that I have seen some 
people recomend.  The client is only hear for about 4 hours a week.  But I am 
getting tired of listening to him complain.

The dhcpd.conf                                           

server-name [server name];                                                               
authoritative;                                                                        
ddns-update-style interim;                                                            
default-lease-time 21600;                                                             
max-lease-time 43200;                                                                 
log-facility local7;                                                                  
option domain-name "[exapmle.local]";                                            
option domain-name-servers 192.168.7.1, 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220;               


zone [example.local]. {
        primary 127.0.0.1;  
}                           

subnet 192.168.7.0 netmask 255.255.255.224 {
        range 192.168.7.20 192.168.7.31;    
        option routers 192.168.7.1;         
        option ip-forwarding off;           
#       deny unknown-clients;               
        zone 7.168.192.in-addr.arpa. {      
                primary [server name].[example.local];
        }                                               
        zone    [example.local.] {                  
                primary [server name].[example.local];
        }                                               

# static addresses list (about 20)
        host Netgear-wireless {
        hardware ethernet 00:18:4d:22:c8:63;
        fixed-address 192.168.7.2;          
        }                                   
        host waterlogged {                  
        hardware ethernet 00:21:63:6b:76:ae;
        fixed-address 192.168.7.7;          
        }                                   
}


-- 
Randy Batterbee

Take a trip with Torah and find out who you really are.

Open Source & Linux
if it ain't broke tweak it
you can always reinstall
and it's free