[olug] dynamic DNS at home

[Phil Brutsche]

thelarsons3 at cox.net wrote:
> Hi guys.  Here's my situation...
> 
> I have a small home LAN.  Basically it's a Linksys router handling
> DHCP, my wife's WinPC, my Linux box, and a number of other "tinker"
> boxes that are not always online.  These other machines usually
> reside in a closet or the basement and only come out when I am
> putzing with one.  From time to time I fix one up nice, give it away,
> and get some other semi-obsolete box to play with.  So it's a
> revolving collection.
> 
> Is there some way I can automagically detect all the computers' names
> from other computers on the network so I don't have to refer to them
> by IP when they're online?  The Linksys doesn't do DNS, only DHCP.
> None of my machines (even the main two) are consistently up 24/7, as
> we'll turn them off if we think we're going to be away for an
> extended period, so I don't think a DNS server will work.  Manually
> updating /etc/hosts with static addresses on all those machines would
> be a PITB.
> 
> If there were a way to poll the LAN and query names from active IPs,
> that would be great.  Does such a thing exist, is there another
> technique I haven't thought of, or am I stuck?  If the solution
> requires that I leave one machine up all the time I'll consider it,
> but a script I could run from anywhere as needed would be ideal.  If
> there are instructions somewhere just point me, but I don't know
> where to start looking.

Dnsmasq (http://thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html) is a unified DNS and 
DHCP server that will probably help in your quest.

-- 

Phil Brutsche
phil at brutsche.us