IP Networking

I have 5 unix and 1 linux machines and due to requirements I must have static IPs, its necessary for documentation and such. We are looking at going to DHCP but how can I "fool" these computers into thinking they have static Ips? Our lan admin said something about putting a second IP tied to the network card, via ifconfig. Would this work?

im not sure what you mean by "fool" the computers into thinking that they have a static IP address, they either have one assigned to them or they dont. assigning static IPs to the computers isnt hard at all. different distrobutions and varients of unix each do things a little differently in regards to how networking is set up at boot time, some will recognize files in the /etc/ directory to set up the default gateway and ip address. most will look at /etc/resolv.conf for your dns servers. if you dont know exaclty how your system does things and dont really feel like looking around to find out, you could always write a simple script to be executed at boot that sets everything up, and that would be done with ifconfig. depending on your distro, configuring the system to use DHCP can be as simple as creating an empy file called dhclient.conf in the /etc/ directory. see the man pages on ifconfig for more info about assigning an IP address to an NIC, aswell as setting the default gateway. hope that helps.

Networks can have both static and dyanamic IP addresses. DHCP servers can be configured to only serve a particular range of IP addresses. Other addresses can be reserved for static interfaces.

Static clients do not use DHCP services for their IP addresses.

THanks, It's just a hassle and a half, documentation wise, and I can't afford downtime except on weekends, can't disrupt developers. Since we've moved to DHCP now my linux box is not showing up in XDMCP broadcast lists, even tho I've got it enabled in xdm. Not sure why yet. Don't want this to happen with the main unix boxes.

If we use DHCP, how do users telnet or FTP to the computers if they don't know their IP?

DHCP is designed for CLIENTS not servers and services. Servers and services normally use static IP addresses. This includes all the services you mention.

Excellent! Thank You!