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

[Chris Green]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2012 at 11:01:45AM +0100, Colin Law wrote:
> 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.

It doesn't actually work though, at least not on my system as at present
set up.  I have tried on both my desktop computer and my laptop
computer, the desktop's hostname is 'chris' the laptop's is
'acer-aspire':-

    chris$ host chris.local
    Host chris.local not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
    chris$ 

    root at acer-spire# host chris.local
    Host chris.local not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
    root at acer-spire#

Anyway I'd really prefer to call a computer 'chris' by that name rather
than 'chris.local'.  (I have checked, the avahi-daemon is running on
both the above machines)



>                                             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.
> 
That's a "specific to ssh" issue which, while significant, isn't really
central to my requirements.

-- 
Chris Green