[Dnsmasq-discuss] unable to resolv hosts by name in my local network

[Rance Hall]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 3:31 AM, Luca Postregna
<luca.postregna at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, this is true. But my question is different, i think.
> If in /etc/hosts are present my hosts, with expandhost option in my dnsmasq
> config, resolv by name work properly.
> But I don't want to specify anything in /etc/hosts. I think that dnsmasq,
> when one client get address, obtain all info (dhcp.leases) to permit itself
> and other clients to resolv by name the new client, is it true?
>
> LP


<snip>

This is almost always true for cases when all clients that need to
resolv each others names are provided by the dhcp server.

You don't have to modify /etc/hosts if dhcp clients are all you have.


There are some common things that interfere with this basic status.

1) Some OSes (usually unix based) ship needing dhclient to be
configured to send a hostname with the dhcp request.  Windows does
this by default, but with *nix this is a configurable option.  NOT
sending the hostname with the dhcp request will cause name resolution
to fail for just these hosts.


2) Its possible (though I've only seen it happen once in my several
years of using dnsmasq) to get a corrupted dhcp.leases file.  If this
file is hosed then name resolution of dhcp clients can be broken
depending on the specific way the leases file gets hosed.

3) the wrong "authoritative" setting in dnsmasq.conf or another dhcp
server somewhere on your net that also thinks its authoritative.

There might be other "off the wall" things as well.

I refer you to my previous post, the behavior you desire is in my
view, default.  If you don't get it, there is something broken.  But
you need to do a better job of explaining what "broken" looks like for
you so we can help you figure out what to do about it.