Small (SoHo) LAN, how to manage local DNS etc.?

[Colin Law]

On 9 October 2012 10:49, Chris Green <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
> What's the "Ubuntu" way to manage DNS etc. on a small Home/Office LAN?
>
> I have a small LAN running at home with, at this precise moment, eight
> devices on the LAN.  These comprise (usually) three or four computers
> running xubuntu, a windows computer, a printer, a DECT phone base
> station and the NAT router that connects them all to the internet.
>
> I need a manageable way to handle these by assigning IP addresses (i.e.
> DHCP) and providing name services (i.e. DNS) such that I can use names
> for the various systems.
>
> So how should one manage this sort of a system?  I can run DHCP on the
> NAT router but that doesn't provide DNS for the LAN so I don't get names
> for my systems.  How do people handle this sort of thing?  Do you just
> set (for example) printers up with static addresses and put them in
> /etc/hosts?  That's not very flexible and means that visitors can't see
> the printer.  Is there a better way?

You should be able to refer to the machines by <name>.local.  So for
example if the machine name is piglet then piglet.local should work.
This is provided by avahi apparently.  In addition you may find it
helpful to allocate fixed ip addresses to each machine so that ssh
does not complain if you use keys to access the machines.  Most
routers have a means of using dhcp but allocating a fixed address to
each machine based on MAC address.

Colin