Re: [LUG] Hostname woes

[Mark Evans <mpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Julian Hall wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I'm setting up NFS between my laptop (geri) and desktop (natalie). 
> However, I can only get it to work with the IP addresses, which is a
> right pain because the network uses DHCP off my Bb router.

Can't you switch off the DHCP server or tell it that certain IP 
addresses are reserved. If it's designed sensibly it won't attempt
to assign an IP address which is already in use on the network.

> At the moment I have (for example) an NFS mount point on natalie of
> /home/julian, so the files are set up as:
>
> /etc/exports
> /home/julian *(rw)

You probably don't want to do that, if there is any wireless networking 
involved you really don't want to do that.
Something like "/home/julian 192.168.1.* (rw)" or "/home/julian 
192.168.1.N (rw)"
> and on geri the /etc/fstab has:
> 192.168.1.2:/home/julian /home/jules/nfs/desktop
>
> This worked yesterday, in fact both machines were talking to each other
> and sharing files.  However because it's using DHCP it won't work today

What IP address does natalie have currently? Most likely it isn't 
192.168.1.2

> after a reset, so I am trying to setup the hostnames.
>
> on natalie the /etc/hosts file has:
>
> 127.0.0.1       natalie.tartarus        localhost.localdomain  
> localhost       natalie
>
> (all on one line)

That isn't going to help much, it's also overcomplex and will slow 
hostname lookups down.

> the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 has:
>
> DHCP_HOSTNAME="natalie.tartarus"
>
> But the hostname does not survive a reboot.  I try pinging natalie or
> geri and get unknown host.

It dosn't matter if it does or it dosn't, since what you are trying has 
no chance of working. It dosn't really matter what hostname is set on 
natalie, since all geri cares about is the IP address of the server.

You appear to be confusing unix hostnames with NETBIOS hostnames. Unix 
machines do not broadcast their hostnames to the local network. (I 
suppose you could install samba on both machines and have them use the 
WINS method.)

> Any ideas gratefully received :)

Either natalie needs to have a fixed IP address or you need some kind of 
dynamic DNS.

The former being rather easier than the latter.

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