[KLUG Members] DHCP / SAMBA

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>Folks, this is a two-pronged question (hold off on the barbs, 
>okay? :-))
>How do I feed addresses assigned by DHCP to SAMBA so that SAMBA 
>(on my Linux box) can find my wifes Win98 box?

Remove all protocols but TCP/IP from the Win9x boxes.  
 
>How do I use addresses generated by DHCP to connect my two Linux 
>boxes (nfs / ssh?)

You need to get them into DNS.  Do you run the DNS service (named/bind) on the
box providing DHCP service?  If so it is pretty trivial,  a few strips of duct
tape and some chewing gum.

>I know I can assign static ip's within the range my router will 

ick.

>allow, but I want to "set it and forget it" so as to make future 
>additions to the stable relatively painless. DHCP seems the way 
>to go on that. I have Rod Smiths book "Linux: Networking for 

Yep, everyone should use DHCP.

The brain-dead approach is to use DHCP to get the address, and manually add the
host name / IP pair to DNS.  The standard DHCP server for Linux does not seem to
recycle IP's until it runs out of originals,  so if you have a large private
allocation for a small network  this actually works pretty well.  It only stinks
the first time you connect a machine to the network.  I have a DHCP server at
home,  and I've had laptops come in after not attaching for almost a year and
acquire the same IP that had the first time,  meanwhile other machines connect
and disconnect all the time.

The BIG GUN solution is to setup your Samba box as a WINS server (so all the
Win9x clients report their name/IP pairs).  Uses "wins hook" to have the WINS
updates propogate into DNS (easier than it sounds).  Then run Samba as a WINS
client on all the Linux machines so they send WINS updates too.  That is how I
do it.  You could of course use a diffrent DNS propogation method for the Linux
boxes (I wrote one that worked via http once) if you don't want Samba on all the
boxes.  With Samba you don't have to re-invent any wheels and yahoo-s with Win9x
laptops will see all your hosts in Network Neighborhood/Ghetto.

Systems and Network Administrator
Morrison Industries
1825 Monroe Ave NW.
Grand Rapids, MI. 49505