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OT: DHCP and fixed host names


Sorry, this is certainly off topic (well, not completely... and I'll try my
best to put an eCos spin on it) and it is not a burning problem for me, but
it is something that I have wondered about this in the past, and it recently
occurred to me that folks on this list might have an answer to this
question.

Enough apologising...

I have wondered why I would want to use DHCP to obtain an IP address for an
eCos application (including RedBoot) instead of assigning a fixed IP address
to each board I have that runs eCos.  The problem is, if each time I boot I
get a different IP address, I need to remember to look at the boot console
(assuming it is connected) in order to determine the IP address for the
board in order to telnet/gdb into the board to do some work.  To put it
differently, if the board runs a server application (which is what RedBoot
and GDB Stubs via ethernet effectively are anyway), I need to have a priori
knowledge of the IP address before my client application (which is what
telnet and GDB effectively are) before I can access the server.

So, is there some way in DHCP to ensure that my board _ALWAYS_ gets the same
IP address?  (From past observation, it certainly appears that it will get
the same IP address most of the time, but that is different than a hard
rule).  If there were, then I could assign a hostname to that fixed IP
address (either locally or through DNS) and never have to look at the
console again.

So far, the simplest answer I have come up with (based on 3ms of thought) is
to assign fixed IP addresses to my development boards and not worry about
the issue.

I suppose I could go read some man pages about our DHCP server, look at some
configuration files and/or source code, and figure out the answer myself,
but what the heck, it's Saturday, other folks have probably already solved
this problem, and, to be quite honest, I am feeling lazy right now :-)

--wpd


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