CentOS - Mar 2010 - DHCP client not working with Windows DHCP / dynamic DNS server

# Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5754 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
HWADDR=00:22:19:XX:XX:XX
ONBOOT=yes
DHCP_HOSTNAME=centos.XXXXXXXXXX.local

In this particular instance, it's a place where Windows is used for DHCP 
and DNS servers. :( I have no control over the Windows side of things.

The Windows sysadmins claim I don't need a fixed IP address, because DNS 
will pick up the name after I make the DHCP request. The problem is, 
that doesn't happen, even though the DHCP client is correctly configured 
(see above). The system is vanilla CentOS 5.4, text-mode install, fully 
updated.

I boot the CentOS system. Then, on another Linux machine, I do "host 
centos.XXXXXXX.local" and it returns host not found. However, if I do 
the same for other hostnames, DNS resolution works fine.

Is there anything else I can do on my side to make it happen? Any 
particular options in dhclient.conf or something like that?

-- 
Florin Andrei
http://florin.myip.org/

Florin Andrei wrote:
> Is there anything else I can do on my side to make it happen? Any
> particular options in dhclient.conf or something like that?
See the man page ?

DYNAMIC DNS
       The client now has some very limited support for doing DNS
updates  when  a  lease  is  acquired. This is prototypical, and
probably doesn't do what you want.   It also only works if you
happen to have control over your DNS server, which isn't very
likely.

       To make it work, you have to declare a key and zone as in
the DHCP server (see  dhcpd.conf(5)  for details).   You also need
to configure the fqdn option on the client, as follows:

         send fqdn.fqdn "grosse.fugue.com.";
         send fqdn.encoded on;
         send fqdn.server-update off;

       The fqdn.fqdn option MUST be a fully-qualified domain name.
You MUST define a zone statement for the zone to be updated.
The fqdn.encoded option may need to be set to on or  off,
depending  on the DHCP server you are using.

--

On my company's windows network the IT guy just assigns static
IPs via MAC addresses to those that want a fixed IP and create
a DNS name associated with it.

Myself I've never liked dynamic DNS, never used it, I like my
zone files organized(and plain text, no binary crap) and I
suspect dynamic DNS would screw it all up. I've seen how
horribly polluted zones can get on windows networks with
dynamic DNS, overlapping names, multiple DNS entries for the
same IP etc.

nate