[NTLUG:Discuss] AT&T@Home redux

[Mark Bickel]

> From discuss-admin at ntlug.org Wed Mar  7 13:26 CST 2001
> Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 13:25:04 -0600 (CST)
> From: <lee at brave.com>
> To: <discuss at ntlug.org>
> Subject: Re: [NTLUG:Discuss] AT&T at Home redux
 
> On Wed, 7 Mar 2001, Ian Pilcher wrote:

> i'm not sure anyone has mentioned this, but i found this bit of info from
> the athome.unix newsgroup:
> 
> <snip>
> 
> 2) Red Hat 6.0 will not properly connect w/most cable providers. Red Hat
> 6.2 and Red Hat 7.0 will, but have some decided security problems. You
> may need to upgrade the 'pump' package that comes with Red Hat 6.2 for
> proper DHCP configuration. For most cable providers, you will need to
> configure the network card for DHCP access.  For Red Hat Linux you will
> also need to edit the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and
> add a line to the end that says
> 
> DHCP_HOSTNAME="cx432152"
> 
> (or whatever the leftmost part of the hostname your provider gave you
> was). Caldera eDesktop 2.4 has no provisions for this, thus is not
> recommended. I am not familiar with other Linux distributions' DHCP
> configuration.
> 
> <snip>

Calder edestop 2.4 does not use pump (which is buggy anyway) but that does not
present a problem. Caldera uses the standard dhcpd which can pass a "hostname"
string to the DHCP server. This can also be added as a variable to network 
scripts so I don't see the problem. The statement about "no provisions for this,
thus is not recommended" I find quite irritating; it's inaccurate and misleading.
While I don't use @home, I do use and am quite familiar with caldera distros.
I expect caldera/@home users can confirm that DHCP over @home works just fine.

Mark.Bickel at ericsson.com