How to use hostname to connect to a DHCP client machine?

I've (finally) got a home wireless network going with my Debian Linux laptop
and desktop and I'm ready to dive into the world of hands on networking.
The machines are DHCP clients. I'm curious to know how to ssh into the
machines using their hostnames instead of their IP addresses. Looked at the
networking HOWTO but didn't see anything there. The two machines are
connected via a wireless Linksys router.

Thanks.

Steve Dondley typed:

> I've (finally) got a home wireless network going with my Debian Linux laptop
> and desktop and I'm ready to dive into the world of hands on networking.

ya - but are you ready to dive into the world of linux newsreaders?

> The machines are DHCP clients. I'm curious to know how to ssh into the
> machines using their hostnames instead of their IP addresses.

if - like my LAN - all PCs keep their internal IP address given to
them by the router.
you can then add each PCs hostname and IP address to /etc/hosts.

eg - /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.2.100 hostname-of-deb-labptop
192.168.2.101 hostname-of-deb-desktop

then you should be able to ssh by hostname.


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Steve Dondley <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> I've (finally) got a home wireless network going with my Debian Linux laptop
> and desktop and I'm ready to dive into the world of hands on networking.
> The machines are DHCP clients. I'm curious to know how to ssh into the
> machines using their hostnames instead of their IP addresses. Looked at the
> networking HOWTO but didn't see anything there. The two machines are
> connected via a wireless Linksys router.

If the DHCP clients are given fixed addresses (they have a
hardware-ethernet clause in them specifying their MAC address), then you
should put their names into a DNS server.

Dynamic DHCP clients shouldn't really be used as servers, but you can
use Dynamic DNS to update DNS when they get a new address via DHCP.

See the DNS-HOWTO, its quite informative.

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Cameron Kerr
(E-Mail Removed) : http://nzgeeks.org/cameron/
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