Configuring the DHCP Server

Configuring the DHCP Server

The dhcp_bootp program is a server that communicates with DHCP and proclaim clients to provide host configuration information, including an IP address at minimum. If your site uses DNS to maintain the hosts map, you need some external mechanism (such as a script) to update the DNS map from the DHCP server. If your site uses NIS to maintain the hosts and ethers maps, dhcp_bootp must be run on the same machine as the NIS master server.

The DHCP server generally uses configuration parameters based upon the subnet number of the originating client request. The configuration files are all placed in the directory /var/dhcp/config and are named in the form config.<netnumber>. For example, the configuration file for clients on the 192.26.61 network should be named config.192.26.61.0. If the subnet configuration file does not exist, then the config.Default file applies instead. If the default configuration file is missing or unreadable, clients are configured to match the DHCP server itself.

To configure the DHCP server, you can run the ProclaimServerMgr graphical interface, as described by the ProclaimServerMgr(1M) reference page. If you prefer, you can configure server options using your favorite text editor, altering the keywords documented on the dhcp_bootp(1M) reference page.