[NCLUG] Teaching dhclient to lie.

[Brian Wood]

On Saturday, October 09, 2010 01:15:57 pm Michael Milligan wrote:
> It is next-to-trivial to setup a DHCP server on one of your in-house
> Linux box(es) and turn off DHCP on the router.  That would be a much
> better way to go and avoid a whole raft of problems you are opening
> yourself up to with your script, given that you can't upgrade firmware
> on the wireless box to support what you need.  You then have full
> control over what clients get what addresses and can configure DHCP
> manual IP assignments, as Brian pointed out, by using host {}
> statements.  All without having to touch default client configurations,
> which of course, is the whole point of having DHCP.

The problem might be that he said the router is not his, and you wouldn't want 2 DHCP servers running on the same subnet, 
but that's a good solution if he *can* shut down the DHCP server in the router.

Or, if you don't have machine you want to run a DHCP server on, or if you would just like a standalone machine to do it, 
you could use something like an NSLU2 (aka: SLUG) to run the DHCP server.

You can install Debian on a slug, or one of its more modern equivalents, like the SheevaPlug machines.

The little slugs can be very useful, I've used them as mail servers, DNS servers, web servers and many other things. Very 
low power (5 or 6 watts), small space, totally silent (no fan) and cheap (though the original NSLU2s are no longer 
available new).

I was able to shut down a 250 watt server that was running 24/7 and replace it with a 6 watt unit, for a considerable 
savings, and less impact on the planet.

More info is here:

http://www.nslu2-linux.org/