-----Original Message----- From: James Knott [mailto:james.knott@rogers.com] Sent: October 13, 2005 12:10 PM To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] Basic setup questions [Part 1]
mlist@safenet-inc.com wrote:
On Wednesday 12 October 2005 21:46, Ian Marlier wrote:
(Note: this is assuming a static IP setup. If you're letting Linksys' DHCP server touch the client, things get all messy.)
So, you imply that the LinkSys DHCP server is doing more than dishing out IP addresses in the range that I specify? I've only got three computers, so I could just go all-static, but I thought that if I specified static addresses for some computers, outside the range allowed for DHCP, then the DHCP server would ignore the computers that had the static addresses. Is there something else that it diddles besides just numeric IP addresses? Why not try an experiment?
First, configure a computer with DHCP and see what works. Then, change to static config, including default route & DNS and see if everything still works.
Because I'm not entirely sure what "see what works" and "see if everything still works" actually refers to.
I'm browsing freely, and KMail can get and send mail to/from my ISP. Those two functions work fine with _either_ static or dynamic addresses on the PCs, as long as I ensure that the static addresses are outside the range that the LinkSys thinks it owns for dynamic allocation (learned that the hard way just a couple of days ago). Other than that, I'm not sure I _have_ anything working that I could try under the two addressing regimes.
I assume that when you're using DHCP, you can connect to the internet, using host names, instead of IP addresses. This means that both default route and DNS configurations are OK. Make note of both of those, and use them when configuring a static address. Then verify you can still get to the internet. Incidentally, some firwall/routers allow you to permantently assign a DHCP address to a computer.
Ah. I may have caught an inkling, here. Is it possible that once the material has been supplied dynamically, it remains present on the SuSE box as a defacto default after I switch over to static addressing? (I refer to the DNS server addresses, netmask, etc., that LinkSys DHCP had previously supplied.) Maybe if I'd started with static addresses -- which would have forced me to input the DNS server IP and other info on each SuSE box, it would have been "top-of-mind" when I read your earlier post. As it is, I started with DHCP, then I just gave YaST a static address... If I recall, the other info was still in the various fields and I didn't need to re-enter it when I told YaST to stop begging for DHCP. About the router assigning the static address... I thought I saw something in the LinkSys config pages, but I wasn't sure what I was looking at -- whether it might have been meant for some other purpose. I'll look again tonight. But what would be the advantage to that, over just telling YaST (to edit the appropriate config file[s] to show) the computer's static address, the netmask, the DNS server IPs...? Hmmm. I suppose if a static address was assigned by DHCP, then the other settings would come along with it, and if I switched ISPs, I'd only need to update the info on the LinkSys, and it would all be propagated... to all two or three computers on my vast network. Was that what you had in mind? It would also help if I took the laptop to another network. If it was expecting DHCP, I would not need to edit IP stuff when connecting to a new LAN. Kevin The information contained in this electronic mail transmission may be privileged and confidential, and therefore, protected from disclosure. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this message and deleting it from your computer without copying or disclosing it.