Hi all,

As the topic stated. RFC 3927's title is "Dynamic Configuration of IPv4 Link-Level Addresses" and is an attempt at a fall back protocol to allow non-static IP addresses to be assigned to an interface in an environment without PPPoE or DHCP services.

Both Windows and Mac OSes support this protocol and I was wondering if Linux does as well. If so, how is it configured? If not, what procedure could I use to provide the support? (It has been implemented as a fall back to DHCP support when a DHCP server isn't located in the subnet, so I would presume that is a good place to add it)

Thanks much!

Yes, Linux supports zeroconf, though I expect that it is distribution dependent whether the functionality is provided. I expect that most mainstream distributions include it.

Depends on the distribution as to whether it's packaged and how well it's integraged. For instance, I know a bunch of the tools are available in Debian/sid but I've never had a reason to install them so I don't know how much configuration is necessary to make them work.

With Mandrake/Mandriva, multicast DNS is easy to setup:
urpmi tmdns
chkconfig --add tmdns
Edit /etc/resolv.conf to start with "nameserver 127.0.0.1" and end with "search local".

For auto-assigning an IP address, it is less automatic. You have to create the /etc/dhclient-exit-hooks (IIRC) file to start zcip on failure of standard DHCP (I found that on Google).

It works very well in Mandriva.

For Debian, though I have a little problem. First you have to install:
apt-get install libnss-mdns
dpkg -i mDSNresponder (you have to download that on the web)
Edit /etc/nsswitch.conf (IIRC) to have a "hosts: file dns mdns4" line.

The IP assignation is the same as with Mandriva.

Unfortunately with Debian, I was able to access the Mandriva box using its name, but somehow the Debian box is invisible to the Mandriva box (whereas two Mandrake/Mandriva PCs see each other)...

Yves.

Thank you VERY much to everyone who responded! I was able to locate a zeroconf implementation called zcip and have downloaded and installed it on a number of test systems. After a bit of tweeking to the ifup script I have it working just fine as a fallback protocol in case DHCP resolution fails (and static IP addresses aren't being used).

I am using FC3, and zeroconf was not part of the distro. Too bad, RedHat really should make it a standard part of the distro as it really is a neat fallback protocol (and is compatible with both Windows and MAC systems in a DHCPless environment).

Ciao!

FC is supposed to be a community driven distro, but I don't know how true that turns out to be in reality. Also FC3 is a major revision back, you see if any of the zeroconf crap is in FC4 before filing any bug reports =)

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post, but I have always had to disable the zeroconf stuff in FC3 by adding NOZEROCONF=yes in /etc/sysconfig/network and disabling (chkconfig off) the mDNSResonder/nifd services. At least I don't remember loading/selecting the howl rpm during my installs of FC3 on multiple systems. It's always been loaded by default.

Hi,

The DNSResponder app did not (does not?) do what I needed to have done. I needed a mechanism that would automatically initialize a TCP/IP address, etc in the event that:
1) No static IP address was specified - and -
2) No DHCP services are available

When I tried this, ifconfig showed localhost (127.0.0.1) was fine on lo, but failed to show anything as being available, or even configured, for eth0. The zcip utility that I downloaded, configured and installed has the ability of initializing eth0 and of providing a usable IP address that follows the protocol outlined in RFC 3927. I believe that the DNSResponder utility only has the ability of performing domain name stuff, not of actually setting up a non-conflicting IP address. (But then again this belief if only due to a brief investigation, so I could be totally incorrect. )

Without the zcip utility, just running the stock FC3 installation, were you able to set up a working eth0 given the above environment? If so, how? What IP address was set up, netmask, etc? What output did ifconfig show for eth0? I am very interested in hearing of your experience with this so hopefully I can learn something.

Thanks much!

My understanding is that there are currently some patent issues that need to be resolved (or a patent-free implementation needs to be created) to complete the implementation on the Linux side.

If you don't care about the patent issues, you can download and install Apple's implementation:

http://developer.apple.com/darwin/pr...our/index.html

It will build on Linux, with "make os=linux" if I understand correctly.