[CLUE-Tech] Easiest DHCP

[Jeremiah Stanley]

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> I'm not too new to linux...I've been messing around with it for awhile
> but I still don't really know very much about it.  I've installed a lot
> of different distributions but I've been stuck with Mandrake for awhile
> now but the internet doesn't work.  I have that AT&T Cable Modem...it
> used to be the @home service but I think they may have changed it now.  
> Before, the static IP address used to work when put it in manually with
> the other distributions, but it doesn't work now with any of them
> (distributions). So, my question is, which distribution has the easiest
> DHCP configuration if they're not all the same?...I've never configured
> it before but now I guess I have to if I want to use the internet
> without crashing (I'm stuck on my windows partition for surfing, email,
> and the sort). Or probably a better question is which DHCP configuration
> distibution has actual DHCP that work...I've tried it with my Mandrake
> but keeps doing some kind of error as if it can't find an IP address at
> all.  Any help in plain english is wonderful.  Thanks a lot.  (I've
> already called AT&T, but they don't have support for Linux....bummer!)

Both the @Home and AT&T cable internet services require that you pass a 
hostname attribute to their DHCP server and then it will give you all the 
information that you need to get packets flowing.

I have had absolutely no luck with pump on RH 7.1 in getting this to work 
but the other program you can use is dhcpd and it works flawlessly for me. 
Granted my uptime looks like this:

  3:04pm  up 135 days,  4:50,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

So I don't really reboot that often. But the four times I've done it since 
I moved in here has worked well!

I had to hack the bash script that reads the 
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth* files but this was only in RH 
7.1 RH7.2 thay made dhcpd the default and pump the secondary. You just 
have to trick RH 7.1's scripts into thinking that pump doesn't exist and 
it will bounce the command and the args for it to dhcpd.

This is what the config looks like for the NIC I have plugged into the 
cheesy router (it doesn't route packets, it is a bridge-like device) that 
I got from AT&T/@Home when I signed up:

DEVICE=eth1
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=yes
DHCP_HOSTNAME=C1000000-A
PEERDNS=no

With the proper hostname changed to protect the innocent (me). I also have 
some fancy iptables setup that grabs my IP and network settings from 
/sbin/ifconfig to configure NAT and firewalling for my internal network 
which Comcast is starting to crack down on this sort of setup 
(http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/24/1957236&mode=thread) so I'll 
most likely have to go back to using Qwaste for DSL really soon (and just 
tell them that I am a Mac user to avoid MSN).

Hope this helps, let us/me know if we can tell you anything else that 
would be helpful!

JStanley
- -- 
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, 
pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.  - Matt Groening
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