I have a laptop running Debian 3.1 that was assigned a static IP address when I was using it at home. I've moved off to college and now I need to have it assign an IP address automatically through DHCP.

I don't yet have accesss to the internet, but once I do, I'd like to know how to properly setup DHCP. So my question is, what is the proper way to do this? Do I need to remove my old /etc/resolv.conf? What configuration files do I need to edit to have my DHCP client start at boot time?

Thank you in advance for your responses, and please excuse the fact that I have very little knowledge of networking on Linux.

You might need to change your /etc/resolv.conf, you will have to add a line like:
(where the ip is the ip of the router or server). You will need to edit /etc/network/interfaces aswell. It should have these lines in it:
Then restart the network:
That is how I normally restart the network, but there might be another way. Hope this helps,
Tom

edit: Just thought, don't you need to install some DHCP client programs? And if the network starts at boot, then it should use DHCP at boot aswell.

Thanks, that worked just how I wanted it to.

Good to here that! I just spent a few weeks trying to fix my router problems you see... Glad it worked anyway.