DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Control Protocol. With this protocol, a new host on the network can issue a request for IP information. The DHCP server will then provide the host with all the necessary information that it needs to communicate on the network, such as its IP address, netmask, the gateway, and the DNS servers that need to be used.
Installing a DHCP server under Ubuntu is an easy task, just type the following command and you will get the DHCP server installed:
sudo apt-get install dhcp3-server
It just needs additional configuration to be useful; we will see this in this section:
/etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf
: This is the configuration file for the DHCP server. By default, it is a heavily commented file that should provide plenty of examples for you to work on./var/lib/dhcp3/dhcpd.leases
: This file contains the current list of DHCP leases that your server has handed out. If you are wondering which MAC address got a particular...