[Dnsmasq-discuss] how to specify dhcp options by machine name?

[Carlos Carvalho]

I'm preparing to install dnsmasq here and I need to give specific dhcp
options to several tens of machines. The way to do it is to assign
network-id's to them and use the dhcp-option clause. However how can
this assignment be done easily? I've only found dhcp-mac (for specific
machines). This makes reading /etc/ethers (wonderful feature) nearly
useless since I still have to create a long list of dhcp-mac
statements with the mac addresses.

It'd be very convenient if one could use the machine name from the dns
side as a network-id in dhcp-option...

I also noticed that there's no possibility of reading another file
instead of /etc/ethers, as can be done for dns with addn-hosts (-H).
This could be useful. Also, since this file would be for dnsmasq only,
one could add a third column with a (optional) network-id for the
machines that need specific options (hint, hint).

Out of curiosity, dnsmasq can be run in name-server-only mode but it
seems it cannot be used in dhcp-server-only mode. Makes me wonder why...

Happy new year to all.