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DHCP and djbdns

DHCP assigns IPs to hosts; DNS reports IPs by hostname. The popular dhcp server is even written by the folks who brought you BIND.

But in our shop, we run djbdns.

I am not a full convert to the djb way. (We run postfix, for example.). I have never met the man in person. I would probably find him infuriating. But I find his claims about BIND and DNS convincing. And I’ve been using his software for the last eight years without a major glitch.

I selected djbdns when I was setting up DNS for my first real website. I had bought the DNS and BIND O’Reilly book and was puzzling through the man pages and just feeling stupider and stupider the more time I spent on it. I figured there must be a better way, so I looked around and found djbdns. The setup instructions were clear and simple. I followed them and everything worked. I felt smart and competent.

Users like software that makes them feel good. There’s a lesson for us all there, I suspect.

Anyway, one of the quirks of djbdns is it doesn’t honor UPDATE requests. Unsecure, you see. Which makes it hard to do DHCP….