Belkin router hostnames problem

Belkin's usually excellent technical support seems to have failed me this
time (although all credit to them for having a toll-free number and
calling me back twice on a **LINUX** issue).

This adsl router has a dhcp server which hands out ip addresses
appropriatly. However, linux machines acquire bizarre hostnames
comprising the string 'unknown' followed by the mac address of the network
card in the client.

Any suggestions?

On Fri, 08 Jul 2005 13:35:02 +0200, John Stolz wrote:
> Belkin's usually excellent technical support seems to have failed me this
> time (although all credit to them for having a toll-free number and
> calling me back twice on a **LINUX** issue).
>
> This adsl router has a dhcp server which hands out ip addresses
> appropriatly. However, linux machines acquire bizarre hostnames
> comprising the string 'unknown' followed by the mac address of the network
> card in the client.
>
> Any suggestions?

my node name from comcast is
c-24-1-202-185.hsd1.tx.comcast.net
I just ignore it and have my node set it's own name.

Depending on dhcp client, you can have a script to modify any files
needing to know the ip address and you set your own node name.

On Fri, 08 Jul 2005 13:35:02 +0200, John Stolz wrote:

> Belkin's usually excellent technical support seems to have failed me this
> time (although all credit to them for having a toll-free number and
> calling me back twice on a **LINUX** issue).
>
> This adsl router has a dhcp server which hands out ip addresses
> appropriatly. However, linux machines acquire bizarre hostnames
> comprising the string 'unknown' followed by the mac address of the network
> card in the client.
>
> Any suggestions?

Since you didn't mention which distribution, I'm going to use Fedora Core
as an example. It sounds like the Belkin router makes use of Dynamic DNS
and you want the hostname of the machine to appear in the DHCP client list
when you view it.

When Fedora Core requests a DHCP address, it doesnÿt send the hostname
unless it is configured to do so.

This is an easy fix! Create a file `/etc/dhclient-X.conf` where X is
either eth0, eth1, eth2, etc. (it will probably be eth0) and put this in
it:

send host-name ´hostname-you-want-to-appear-in-dns";

You may want to read the man page for dhclient to see what other nifty
things you can do.

For me, that's the only entry I usually put in the dhclient
configuration file and it's strictly for my laptop. At the house, all
of my desktop PCs have fixed addresses and are statically entered into DNS.

Randy

Thanks for this it didn't solve it directly, but set me on the right
track.
I'm on MDK 10.1 and the relevant file is /etc/sysconfig/network
and adding NEEDHOSTNAME=no seems to do the trick
Thanks again.
John