Gregory L. Hering wrote:
Dear Joshua,
BIND is not related to DHCP at all. DHCP serves IP addresses to machines that don't already have them assigned. BTW, it's called dynamic addressing, but usually the server will give the same address to a particular machine.
Not necessarily true, but it can be setup to give the same IP to a certain MAC address.
BIND (i.e. named) is a DNS server. It takes requests for a name-to-IP translation and returns an IP address. Basically, BIND takes a centralized 'hosts' file and gives it out on request to other machines on your LAN with empty hosts files.
If you have an entry in your local host file already and your search order is 'files, dns' then it will take the entry in the host file without requesting a DNS lookup from your server. If your server can't resolve the reference it either gives up or, if you have an outside source configured, it will pass the request on to them and the cycle is repeated.
For BIND to work, you have to create a fixed 'hosts' file (called a zone file) on the BIND server that describes the nodes on your network. You can't do this with dynamic IP addresses, so you have to give fixed addresses to all your machines anyway.
Unless you have a large or very frequently changing network you would be better off just to modify all your host files. Trust me, configuring BIND is not trivial. I wouldn't consider it at all if your Linux box isn't up 24/7, because all your nodes on your LAN must point to this DNS server for both name sets (your LAN names and 'real' WAN names) to be served and if the Linux box is ever down you are out of business. In fact, once you do this, you will probably want to consider setting up a secondary or backup DNS server against the case that your primary server goes off line.
Once your IPs are fixed and your host files are setup you'll be done and home free. Don't try the BIND approach without first considering the cost/benefit ratio.
The real BIND home page:
http://www.isc.org/sw/bind/
and the FAQ there:
http://www.isc.org/sw/bind/FAQ.php
BTW, if someone would like to volunteer how the Windows boxes are getting the name info of the Linux box I would love to hear it
I can tell you, but don't believe me because I am not in my right mind. If the linux machine is running samba and samba is setup for the same workgroup, netbios does this (when you start smb, it also starts nmbd).
--- on Thursday, jev phoenixresearch info wrote ---
/From/: Joshua E Vines <jev phoenixresearch info>
/To/: Shrike-list Digest <shrike-list redhat com>
/Subject/: Re (8th): DNS lookup failure on Linksys router
/Date/: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 12:26:11 -0500
Who in their right minds would want to configure a hosts file in a dynamic environment?! As I have said before, Linux is not always on (I don't always have the system powered up), which is why I can not allow Linux to take over DNS for the network.
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