DNS and DHCP server on Leopard

Good stuff. I'm actually looking at ordering a Mac mini shortly to do a very similar thing - consolidate services of two aging machines (Power Mac G4 and FreeBSD PC). I was just looking into moving the FreeBSD machine's dhcp and dns services to a Mac. Currently testing on the G4.

For dns, I edited /etc/named.conf to look similar to what I have on FreeBSD, then added my local zone files from the FreeBSD machine to /var/named on the Mac. Finally, it was enabled using
Not too hard.

For dhcp, I thought about installing the ISC dhcpd, as that's what's running on my FreeBSD server. However, OS X comes with bootpd out of the box which also serves up dhcp leases. There's no config file for bootpd on Leopard client by default, so you can make it create one by temporarily turning on Internet Sharing. Then copy /etc/bootpd.plist out of the way and turn off Internet Sharing. Edit the file you copied and put it back as /etc/bootpd.plist. Finally, if desired, create a file called /etc/bootptab with a list of static IP addresses if you're serving any (do a 'man bootptab' for info).

Enabling bootpd was similar to named:
After fixing a couple of config file problems, it seems to work!

I can go into more detail if desired.

bankshot said:

After fixing a couple of config file problems, it seems to work!
I can go into more detail if desired.

Click to expand...

Some more details on your config file problems would be excellent.

I've just ordered a mini to also replace two aging boxes - one linux samba/bind/dhcp/apache server, and a centos trixbox pbx server which I've already cloned & configured on my macbook to run under parallels on the mini.

Any tips to save downtime (& my behind ;-) would be greatly appreciated.

Hi bankshot

I have been able to use some of your instructions to get the DHCP server figured out but still seem to have some issues left.

first I had some difficulty editing /etc/bootpd.plist

even after changing the file to read/write for all I was unable to edit it.
Finally I decided to do it the rough way by using:

sudo /Developer/Applications/Utilities/Property\ List\ Editor.app/Contents/MacOS/Property\ List\ Editor /etc/bootpd.plist

which worked (see file below)

As you can see below I am trying to manage 2 interfaces

en1 = airport
en2 = USB ethernet interface

Somehow I still don't seem to have a awfull amount of luck.

1)
since internet connection sharing is now disabled the airport has stopped behaving as a base station.
Any ideas to enable it without stating internet connection sharing (which I assume won't work as this messes up the bootpd.plist file)

2)
Receiving a DHCP response over en2 also doesn seem to work.
In the console I see:

Jul 26 12:03:24 Gandalf bootpd[66]: DHCP DISCOVER [en2]: 1,0:23:32:c6:4d:ce <Eowyn>

which suggest my server is seeing my laptop, somehow however I don't get a new IP adress making my laptop divert to the 169.254.x.x range

any ideas, something I missed?

Regards
Remi


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Subnets</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>_creator</key>
<string>com.apple.nat</string>
<key>allocate</key>
<true/>
<key>dhcp_domain_name_server</key>
<string>192.168.0.1</string>
<key>dhcp_router</key>
<string>192.168.2.2</string>
<key>lease_max</key>
<integer>3600</integer>
<key>lease_min</key>
<integer>3600</integer>
<key>name</key>
<string>192.168.2.2</string>
<key>net_address</key>
<string>192.168.2.2</string>
<key>net_mask</key>
<string>255.255.0.0</string>
<key>net_range</key>
<array>
<string>192.168.2.100</string>
<string>192.168.2.254</string>
</array>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>_creator</key>
<string>com.apple.nat</string>
<key>allocate</key>
<true/>
<key>dhcp_domain_name_server</key>
<string>192.168.0.1</string>
<key>dhcp_router</key>
<string>192.168.2.1</string>
<key>lease_max</key>
<integer>3600</integer>
<key>lease_min</key>
<integer>3600</integer>
<key>name</key>
<string>192.168.2.1</string>
<key>net_address</key>
<string>192.168.2.1</string>
<key>net_mask</key>
<string>255.255.0.0</string>
<key>net_range</key>
<array>
<string>192.168.2.10</string>
<string>192.168.2.99</string>
</array>
</dict>
</array>
<key>bootp_enabled</key>
<true/>
<key>detect_other_dhcp_server</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>dhcp_enabled</key>
<array>
<string>en2</string>
<string>en1</string>
</array>
<key>reply_threshold_seconds</key>
<integer>0</integer>
</dict>
</plist>