DHCP client configuration on FreeBSD

Beech Rintoul beech at alaskaparadise.com
Sat Apr 28 01:34:09 UTC 2007


On Friday 27 April 2007, L Goodwin said:
> When I ran the DHCP client configuration tool on
> FreeBSD 6.2, it added a new hostname variable to
> /etc/rc.conf below existing the hostname var (it did
> not remove or comment-out the old hostname variable).
>
> The NEW hostname includes the ISP's domain name:
>   hostname="dhcppc0.<ISP domain name here>"
>
> This hostname differs from the hostname listed in the
> router's DHCP table "dhcpp0" (no domain name). It also
> shows unique IP addresses and MAC addresses for all
> hosts on the LAN.
>
> I can ping the IP address assigned to the FreeBSD
> system, but ping and net lookup fail when its hostname
> is specified (both with and without the domain name).
>
> Questions:
> 1) Why did the hostname get changed (does not occur
> for Windows clients)?
> 2) Why does the hostname in /etc/rc.conf contain the
> DNS domain name?

FreeBSD uses the FQDN (fully qualified domain name) as the hostname.

Example: hostname= "yourmachine.yourdomain.com"


> 3) How do I resolve this problem?

Unless you provide your own DNS that resolves your internal network 
and supersede dhclient with your domain name,  DHCP will use the 
domain and DNS from your provider. Your windows boxes point to your 
isp's nameservers which have no records of your server or it's 
address. Therefore it can't resolve your machine's hostname. If you 
do provide your own internal name service you will also need to 
edit  /etc/dhclient.config (see man dhclient.conf), and point your 
windows boxes to your DNS instead of your isp's. You can use a 
fictitious domain name internally, just make sure that the domain 
doesn't actually exist on the net. You can also use the FreeBSD IP 
address as a domain name on your windows boxes to connect.

Running  bind requires a fairly steep learning curve, but there are 
simple nameservers in the ports tree that would probably better suit 
your needs.

Beech

>
> Thanks!
>
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