localhost or LAN addresses in /etc/hosts

[Karl F. Larsen]

Bart Silverstrim wrote:
> Derek Broughton wrote:
>   
>> Chris G wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 09:54:13AM -0400, Derek Broughton wrote:
>>>       
>>>> Chris G wrote:
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>>> The whole point is to make things easy to configure, my router
>>>>> certainly *doesn't* know the names/addresses of machines on my LAN
>>>>> and I don't really see how it could.
>>>>>           
>>>> The usual way is by the machine asking for DHCP to send its name, and
>>>> the router sends back an IP - and updates its local DNS.  This is not
>>>> implemented in every router, but it's _really_ common.
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> So the *router* decides what the machine's name is?
>>>       
>> No, "the machine asking for DHCP" (ie, your computer) "sends"  its own 
>> name to the DHCP server.
>>     
>
> Sorry, this also can be a way to name a device.
>
> I was thinking of situations where you can update the DNS records to a 
> fixed name for a given IP.
>
>
>   
    The reason someone invented networking was because his/her network 
got too large to guess were things are. Now if you let a Router set your 
ip numbers it will do it but not the same way all the time. You add 
another item and ALL ip numbers can change.

    Enter networking simple. Let's say you have a computer and a printer 
and several other things. Call the Router from the Internet 192.168.0.1 
and set the computer as
192.168.0.2 and make the printer 192.168.0.3 and set them manually not 
DHCP. Now in your /etc/resolv.conf which might look like this:

karl at karl-hardy:/etc$ more resolv.conf
### BEGIN INFO
#
# Modified_by:  NetworkManager
# Process:      /usr/bin/NetworkManager
# Process_id:   5067
#
### END INFO



nameserver 216.234.192.92
nameserver 216.234.213.130


You will want to add things the computer needs to know. It might look 
like this:

192.168.0.3     prnt   printer
192.168.0.2     comp


It looks about like this but the main thing to know is that DHCP can not 
be trusted! You must give each item connected by the Internet an IP 
number. And you must be able to ping everything from the computer.


Karl


-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.
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