Hi guys,

I thought I'd ask the question before I actually do it, I'm pretty sure it could be done but I want to be certain.

I want to set up one Red Hat 9 server to act as both a DHCP and a DNS server. The host machines connecting to the network will be Windows machines, and about 15 -20 of them.

When one of the Windows clients obtain an IP from the DHCP server, I want the DNS to automatically update so each machine can do resolve IP to name, and name to IP.

Can this be done so after the server is set up properly there is little to do afterwards in regards to updating the DNS etc.

Thanks alot.

Regards
Craig

This works with no problems. I'm not going to go into too much detail on how to set this up because Google can point you to some detailed info. But the highlights are:

• In /etc/dhcpd.conf, you will need ddns-updates on and ddns-domainname
• In /etc/named.conf, you will need allow-update.
• In both files you will need to setup a key for security purposes.

One other thing to note. I recall that when I had a Linux (RH9) DHCP client things didn't work properly. That was because the client did not send its hostname to the server. There is a configuration option to fix that, but I don't know it offhand.

Thanks for your help mate.

I'll start googling.

Thanks again.

Regards
Craig

i never managed to get ddns working correctly, the keys were annoying me for motnsh and i gave up. if you're after a much much lower level approach that's really easy to configure, try dnsmasq, which is a small dns server which can monitor changes in your dhcpd.leases file and server dns queries based directly on the contents (as well as external dns queries etc...) worth a go if you don;t need to full scale assault of bind,

Hi acid,

So if I get dnsmasq downloaded and installed, that should meet my needs? A self updating dns server (for windows clients) ? That's really all I want to work.

Thanks for your reply
>Craig

as long as you can run it local to your dhcpd server, or have similar suitable access to the lease file yeah. I know that i should be spending even more time getting bind nailed down so hard, but i have a 4 client netowrk, and no need at all for anythign more than what dnsmasq can set up in minutes.

thanks heaps

>Craig :

Hi again,

Sorry to post again, just one last question. I've downloaded and installed dnsmasq from the "thekelleys" official website. There isn't much info on their site in regards to configuring it.

I have installed dnsmasq on my dhcpd server. Is there any file which I should be configuring? It doesn't just automatically do everything does it?

Thanks
Craig

another solution to the whole thing:

setup DHCP so that each computer gets the same ip each time it requests one. that way you leave out ddns altogether.
this would involve getting the MAC address from each machine which leaves some room for error but it may be a little more straight forward.

just check the dnsmasq man page, it's all there including config file locations.