I have a SpeedTouch 510 ADSL router connected to a hub. There are a number of machines connected to the hub, each multi-boot with for example Mandrake 10, Suse 9.1, FC1, Debian(Knoppix3.6) and Windows.

I frequently reboot to a different OS, particularly so at the moment as I am new to Linux and doing lots of comparison, messing about, and learning (hopefully !). I am trying to set up my network so that as each distinct host (by which I mean particular OS on a particular machine, is that correct usage ?) fires up it gets network parameters via DHCP from the SpeedTouch, and can be seen by others on the LAN.

I believe I have configured each hostname correctly with graphical tools and/or editing /etc/sysconfig/network, /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname etc. At first I had a similar problem to the one described by twood in the thread "Automatic hostname in Redhat 9", i.e. a client would seem to adopt the hostname of another client previously booted on the same machine (and therefore same NIC, obviously). I seem to have chased that away, but can't pin down what actually did it.

The problem now is that the DNS server in the SpeedTouch behaves differently with each client. Some cause an entry to be made in the SpeedTouch DNS Hostname Table when booted, some don't. Of those that do, some entries seem "sticky", in that they remain even when that machine is rebooted to another client, which may or may not cause the previous one to be deleted. So I soon end up with a table in the SpeedTouch that list multiple hostnames at the same Address, duplicate entries, etc. It means that if I ping <hostname1> I get replies from <hostname2> at the IP previously used by hostname1 which is not even running.

I guess I need to learn a lot more about DNS and DHCP (and lots of other things)... Apologies if you think this is not the right forum, but I thought that the different behaviour of each distribution made it a Linux, as opposed to networking issue. It looks as though some clients are clearing their own entries from the SpeedTouch DNS table as they are shutdown, and some are not. I'm not saying that's what's happening, and can't find any reference to that function, just how it looks.

I'd be grateful for any help or pointers.

yo mate duno about this SpeedTouch , put im sure "dnsmasq" is pretty easy to configure as cache only dns server and dhcp server. try it if you are looking for an easy and cool cache only dns.

regards

I hope to have a 24hr machine for such things in the long term, but need to learn a lot more first. In the meantime it makes sense for me to use the SpeedTouch. Thanks for suggestion though.