On 12/20/06, Dazed_75 <lthielster@gmail.com> wrote:

WOW, thanks for all the input. Frankly most of the replies violate the first criteria since most seem to require an always on computer system (and while a router such as a Linksys WRT54 really is a computer, I do not count it for that criteria). And the only solution I still see is the one of using a router with dnsmasq. For example by using open-wrt on any of the supported routers such as the wrt54gl (not the model I currently have).

I am not sure Craigs message denigrating "appliance" devices applies to something like open-wrt but I also do not know what djb is and a web search was not revealing. I do know that dnsmasq allows you to choose lease duration, and my linksys router does retain leases at least for their duration.

FYI, machines on my network run Ubuntu 6.06, 6.10, kubuntu 6.06, Windows XP, 98SE, and sometimes Win ME, win2k, Mepis, SUSE 10.1, puppy, knoppix, DSL, LFS, even tried Mandrake and gentoo. I have not run RedHat in years but have run 4, 5, 6, 8, and even 9. Never ran Fedora. I probably add and remove an average of two machines per week. LOW maintenance is critical. I think a solutuion for me would also work for TONS of people with simpler needs and for members of SLUG. That is why I would prefer the whole enchilada be in an off-the-shelf router. I just have not found one with it built in.

On 12/20/06, Eric Shubes < plug@shubes.net>wrote:
Craig White wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-12-20 at 06:32 -0700, Eric "Shubes" wrote:
>> Dazed_75 wrote:
>>> I think I have found the answer.  It looks to me like a router which has
>>> dnsmasq functionality is exactly what I am looking for.  It would have
>>> been nice to find a no cost solution, but I think this is the right
>>> answer.  Looks like it meets all the criteria and beyond the initial
>>> setup seems to be mostly maintenance free.
>>>
>>> For those that have a single machine sharing its network connection with
>>> the rest of the LAN, they can do this totally with dnsmasq software.
>>>
>> L,
>> I'm glad you've found something that meets your requirements. Three comments:
>>
>> 1) The first criteria was that no 'computers' are always turned on. I guess
>> you're not including a router as a computer. Your DHCP/DNS server would
>> *have* to be on all the time. ;)
>>
>> 2) A solution that's been working for me is IPCop ( http://ipcop.org) on a
>> formerly retired emachines 333mh box. Pretty much a firewall on steroids,
>> IPCop provides a slew of neat features including DHCP and DNS (caching and
>> local hosts) services. I use every feature available (except web proxy) to
>> one extent or another. It's very easy to configure, as everything after
>> initial NIC configuration (part of installation) is web based. However,
>> TTBOMK IPCop does not have a way to automatically update DNS hosts from
>> dynamic DHCP leases. It's very simple though to assign static IP addresses
>> to servers in DHCP and add them to the DNS hosts file. At least all
>> maintenance is consolidated this way, and is easy to do (gui web, from any
>> machine that's running on the LAN).
>>
>> 3) While not necessarily a concern in the environment(s) you're addressing,
>> updating DNS with dynamic DHCP leases can be a security risk in some
>> (business) environments. I'm guessing this is why you don't see much of it
>> going on.
>>
>> Just my .02
>>
>> P.S. Samba might be more what you're looking for, but that only covers the
>> DNS (name resolution) part. You'd still need a DHCP server available to hand
>> out local IP addresses.
> ----
> I definitely agree on ipcop but:
>
> - businesses definitely use dynamic dns with dhcp leases...that is
> standard operational mode for Windows AD and even if using ISC's DHCPd,
> Windows machines will try to do an RRSET on the dns server. I routinely
> use ISC's DHCPd and BIND and routinely use dynamic updating and set the
> appropriate ACL's

Agreed. However, Dazed's configuration isn't using Windows AD.

> - Samba doesn't do DNS resolution by default, but uses NetBIOS and WINS
> resolutions which are clearly not DNS, don't provide fqdn (fully
> qualified domain name) and not appropriate for resolution on typical
> tcp/ip based services.

I'm thinking that Dazed's LAN would not need fqdn's. Perhaps I'm mistaken.
Your point that samba is not a robust DNS solution is certainly valid though.

> - While I don't recall ipcop's web based interface having options for
> ddns and I don't use ipcop to provide DHCP or DNS services, I can see
> that the versions are more than capable of supporting ddns and can
> easily be manually configured to do so.

That'd certainly be worth looking into. It'd be a nice feature to request
for the base distro too.

> Craig
>
Thanks, Craig. The howto you referenced at http://www.brennan.id.au/ looks
very nice.

--
-Eric 'shubes'
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