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Provide alternate DNS via DHCP?

Adam

Provide alternate DNS via DHCP?
« on: April 25, 2003, 01:39:38 AM »
Hi all,

We have a small office network with 2 sme servers and one win2k server, mixture of w2k, xp and macs as clients.

SME1 (pheonix) is our net gateway, and also provides DHCP to the network (the other one is just used as a file server). The W2K server (buffalo) is the PDC.

When using DHCP as normal, the SME box provides itself as the DNS server (logically). However good old XP tries to write a whole bunch of crap to the DNS server when a user logs in, resulting in a 5 minute wait before the desktop appears.

To solve this I have set up the W2K box as a DNS server also, with recursion to the SME DNS, which works just fine. However I have to go around and set each PC to use the W2K box for primary DNS instead of the SME, which kinda defeats the purpose of using DHCP :)

My question is, is it possible to get the SME box to hand out the W2K box as primary DNS and itself as secondary (via DHCP)?

TIA,
Adam

Nathan Fowler

Re: Provide alternate DNS via DHCP?
« Reply #1 on: April 25, 2003, 02:49:11 AM »
Yes, the file you want to edit would be:

/etc/dhcpd.conf

The specific line would be:
option domain-name-servers  XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX YYY.YYY.YYY.YYYY;

Where XXX is the IP address of the primary DNS server and YYY is the IP address of the secondary DNS server.

It may be necessary to do the following:
mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/dhcpd.conf
cp /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/dhcpd.conf/25DomainNameServers /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/dhcpd.conf

Edit 25DomainNameServers to use the syntax as described above.  Your template structure and filenames may differ from mine, I am running an older (but highly updated) version of E-Smith.

Kelvin

Re: Provide alternate DNS via DHCP?
« Reply #2 on: April 26, 2003, 05:59:45 AM »
Hi Adam,

Wouldn't it be easier to disable SME's DHCP then setup DHCP on the PDC and just set the options for gateway / router /DNS there ?

Kelvin

Paul T.C.Fung

Re: Provide alternate DNS via DHCP?
« Reply #3 on: April 28, 2003, 01:04:18 AM »
Dear Adam.

>We have a small office network with 2 sme servers and one win2k server, mixture of w2k, xp and macs as clients.

I have my office like your site, with W2K, 98SE, Mac and XP(Home) I have not setup any W2K as PDC but using the SME 5.5U5 as PDC and it run fine.

It sounds like a DHCP problem and I guess the XP is not correctly setup, also, how is the other SME server setup ?
Is it a Server Only mode system with DHCP and PDC trun off ??

...... I just wounder ...... as I am not knowing the detail.......

Best Regards,

Paul