Dynamically registering Unix/Linux hosts in DNS

An age-old problem in mixed IT environments is that Windows servers can register themselves dynamically in a (Windows) DNS server and Unix/Linux servers can't (easily).

Solaris has a way to fix this and I just discovered that Red Hat has one too. The RHEL 4 Reference Guide mentions adding the parameter DHCP_HOSTNAME in the ifcfg-eth# files. That will tell the DHCP client to specify a hostname when acquiring an IP address.

Another search led to the use of nsupdate which seems to register a Linux host using Kerberos in the AD so that it can update its hostname on future reboots.

I haven't tested both methods yet, but I will soon and let you know.

Comments

Tuning the nscd name cache daemon

I've been playing a bit with the nscd now and want to share some tips related to tuning the nscd.conf file. To see how the DNS cache is doing, use nscd -g. nscd configuration: 0 server debug level 26m 57s server runtime 5 current number of threads 32 maximum number of threads 0 number of times clients had to wait yes paranoia mode enabled 3600 restart internal passwd cache: no cache is enabled [other zero output removed] group cache: no cache is enabled [other zero output removed] hosts cache: yes cache is enabled yes cache is persistent yes cache is shared 211 suggested size 216064 total data pool size 1144 used data pool size 3600 seconds time to live for positive entries 20 seconds time to live for negative entries 66254 cache hi...

Preventing PuTTY timeouts

Just found a great tip to prevent timeouts of PuTTY sessions. I'm fine with timeouts by the host, but in our case the firewall kills sessions after 30 minutes of inactivity... When using PuTTY to ssh to your Linux/Unix servers, be sure to use the feature to send NULL packets to prevent a timeout. I've set it to once every 900 seconds, i.e. 15 minutes... See screenshot on the right.

Logbook and Note Book

I'm no longer actively working with Linux although I use it privately. This was my work logbook during my job as a Linux Engineer and Architect for KPN Data Centers. I'm keeping this as a log and note book. Who knows when it comes in handy although much will be outdated. If you find any good resources or more current howtos for what was written here, let me know!

Oracle: Unbreak my Linux Heart

Search This Blog