On Tuesday 28 December 2004 01:25, Christopher J. Bottaro wrote: >Simple setup. I have a router that assigns IP addresses by DHCP. I > have two linux machines: compa and compb which get their IP > addresses using DHCP with the router. From compa, I want to be > able to say "ping compb" instead of having to use ifconfig on compb > to figure out what its IP address is, then ping it (i.e. "ping > 192.168.1.3"). > >How is this possible? Manually editing the /etc/hosts file doesn't > work because the IP addresses can change at boot (or whenever DHCP > is used to get a new address). > >Thanks. Turn off the dhcp in the router and use the /etc/hosts file to do the resolving. You can use the same hosts file throughout your local network. I've been doing that here for 6 or 7 years. You'll have to assign the local ip address per machine in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 scripts also, which will give a fixed address for that machine. To me, dhcp on a small home network, or even on an 80+ machine business internal network is a waste of time and resources. But then thats just my opinion too. One could even setup a cron job on those machines that have a cron, to grab the master copy of the hosts file and refresh it if the network is being constantly changed. That would take a load off the IT guy, who usually has his own pool of alligators to wrestle. -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) 99.30% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly Yahoo.com attorneys please note, additions to this message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2004 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
