dnsmasq: What does it do?

I am using Woody. I had dnsmasq installed and
then I removed it. I dont see any difference at
all in the network with or without this program.

I am not sure what it does.

"tom" <(E-Mail Removed)> skrev i meddelandet
news:zsOmd.51966$5K2.47134@attbi_s03...
>I am using Woody. I had dnsmasq installed and
> then I removed it. I dont see any difference at
> all in the network with or without this program.
>
> I am not sure what it does.
>
>

http://thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html

"Conny" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:UlQmd.8990$(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> "tom" <(E-Mail Removed)> skrev i meddelandet
> news:zsOmd.51966$5K2.47134@attbi_s03...
> >I am using Woody. I had dnsmasq installed and
> > then I removed it. I dont see any difference at
> > all in the network with or without this program.
> >
> > I am not sure what it does.
> >
> >
>
> http://thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html
>
>
>

Been there, read that, and I still dont understand
what this program does. Also, I see no place
where this is an explanation on how to configure this
program.

What I need is an application for name serving
behind a blue linksys box which does dhcp but
will not assign names or ip addresses to specific
MACs.

It would be fairly trivial to write such an application
based on either Samba or some form of broadcasting
but I am surprised it is not already written.

There must quite a lot of those blue boxes out there.

> What I need is an application for name serving behind a blue linksys box
> which does dhcp but will not assign names or ip addresses to
> specific MACs.

Then dnsmasq might indeed be exactly what you want: turn off Linksys's DHCP
server and use your Debian's dnsmasq as the DHCP server instead (dnsmasq
does both DHCP and DNS serving and can be configured to bridge the two in
various ways, so you can associate fixed IPs to some MACs or fixd DNS names
to some MACs, ...).

This assumes that your Debian box is "always up and running", of course.

An alternative if your router uses Linux (the wrt54g does) is to use one of
the third party firmwares (google for OpenWRT for example) which use dnsmasq
as their DNS and DHCP server. That's what I do (except with an ASUS WL-500g
box, see wl500g.dyndns.org).


Stefan

"Stefan Monnier" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:jwvekirrsgr.fsf-monnier+(E-Mail Removed)...
> > What I need is an application for name serving behind a blue linksys box
> > which does dhcp but will not assign names or ip addresses to
> > specific MACs.
>
> Then dnsmasq might indeed be exactly what you want: turn off Linksys's
DHCP
> server and use your Debian's dnsmasq as the DHCP server instead (dnsmasq
> does both DHCP and DNS serving and can be configured to bridge the two in
> various ways, so you can associate fixed IPs to some MACs or fixd DNS
names
> to some MACs, ...).
>
> This assumes that your Debian box is "always up and running", of course.
>
> An alternative if your router uses Linux (the wrt54g does) is to use one
of
> the third party firmwares (google for OpenWRT for example) which use
dnsmasq
> as their DNS and DHCP server. That's what I do (except with an ASUS
WL-500g
> box, see wl500g.dyndns.org).
>
>
> Stefan

Well I have three windows computers and one linux
computer on this network. One of the windows
computers is set up as dual boot computer, and
when this computer is booted into linux it cant
talk to the Linux computer by name in some
applications like ping.

I certainly dont want a system that goes down if
if the linux computer is down so I certainly
dont want to turn off the dhcp on the linksys
box.

I could write a program that would read from
the Samba configuration and then write to the
/etc/hosts file to make sure everything has a name
on the system. But it seems to me that somewhere
or other this must already be written in some form
or fashion.

There are quite a few of these linksys boxes around and it seems that
there must be some way to serve
names behind them using linux.

Of course one does have the option of writing
to the firmware on the box like you suggest,
but certainly there should be an easier way also.

By the way on a totally unrelated matter
with this network and Win98 computers
Samba chokes in its default configuration.
bcast is the only name resolve mode that will
work. I would be surprised if several people
have not given up on Samba for this problem
alone.

> Well I have three windows computers and one linux computer on this
> network. One of the windows computers is set up as dual boot computer,
> and when this computer is booted into linux it cant talk to the Linux
> computer by name in some applications like ping.

Similar to my situation, indeed.

> I certainly dont want a system that goes down if if the linux computer is
> down so I certainly dont want to turn off the dhcp on the linksys box.

Same here. I've looked for a solution for quite a while and was amazed to
see that the best advice people could give me was to rely on Samba.

> There are quite a few of these linksys boxes around and it seems that
> there must be some way to serve names behind them using linux.

The best answer is to setup dnsmasq on your router. Most router boxes do
not come with it, but those that internally run Linux (such as wrt54g or
wl-500g) can be customized.
If your router can't be customized that way I see two solutions:
1 - write some ugly hack that kinda works sometimes.
2 - get yourself another router.

> Of course one does have the option of writing
> to the firmware on the box like you suggest,
> but certainly there should be an easier way also.

Actually, in the case of the WL-500g, the built-in firmware does offer to
set some static MAC->IP mappings for its DHCP server, so you can't get DNS
names, but at least you can get fixed IP addresses (in the 192.68.1.XXX
range), and you can then setup /etc/hosts files to give the machines real
names. That's what I used to use before installing a third-party firmware.

The Linksys box I had before did not have the ability to set up fixed
MAC->IP mappings, but I'd be surprised if the wl500g is the only one that
has this feature.


Stefan