I have a small network that includes 3 PCs running SuSE 8.1, WinXP and a Win98 box (which will become SuSE someday). They are all connected to a Linksys BEFSR41 which is the DCHP server. I am trying to configure BIND on the SuSE box so that I can refer to the machines by name but I am a bit stuck right now.

All of the BIND material I have read so far explain how to configure DNS for static IPs. How can I set it up with dynamic IPs?

You would need to configure your DNS to accept dynamic updates from your DHCP. But I am not sure whether the Linksys router DHCP server has the capability.

Alternatively, if you network will be pretty static, you can simply add the IPs and the relevant hostnames to the DNS files.

The bind stuff is for you to make your box a DNS server which then other machines will refer to to get DNS lookups. That's why normally it will have a static IP address because other machines need to know how to find it. This probably isn't what you want unless you want to make one of your linux machines a server at some point in which case allocating it a static IP address is probably essential.

If you want to access your Windows machines by name are you talking about their Netbios names? On your desktop (if you're SuSE 9.x and KDE ) there's an icon called Local Network - this should enable you to browse your Windows workgroup and you should see their Windows names. There's also a Samba client tool in YaST that will allow you to join the linux box to their workgroup. If you want them to access data on your linux box then you will need Samba server - which is another set of reading for you!

If you just want to refer to them by name rather than IP address then you do need a DNS server somewhere if they are allocated dynamic IP addresses by a DHCP server. This is normally the same machine as the DHCP server but routers although providing DHCP services don't usually provide proper DNS services - they do DNS forwarding so that internet for example works by relaying your DNS requests to an internet DNS server. However, this won't work for your local network as that's private.

Therefore it all depends on what exactly you need - the only thing I will say is that everything is possible in linux - but some things are easier than others.

Very well said andrewdodsworth

Hi, the best thing you can do is to disable the DHCP server on your router for 2 reasons.

1st:
A DNS Server is unusable if his address is dynamic !!!

2nd:
Your router doesn't support a dynamic integration with a DNS Server.

So, the easyest way for you to resolve your problem is to use your Linux box as DHCP and DNS Services.
First you have to disable your router DHCP service (For LAN Only).
It's simple to configure the 2 Services (with Yast2) and to integrate them.
At home I have the same solution and it works fine.

Try that...
Hope this helps, bye Kess...

Thank you one and all for your help and suggestions. I will make the Linux server the DNS and DHCP server rather than relying on the router to handle addressing. I failed to mention that I did create a static IP address on the Linux box specifically for the DNS server. Yes I understand that a simple /etc/hosts solution would work best for me here, but where's the fun and learning in that??? The idea was that the static IP on the Linux DHCP/DNS box would be for DHCP/DNS use only. All other traffic would go to the dynamic IP addr.