Register A records for my Linux box on my Windows 2008 DNS/DHCP server

Solution 1:

after you`ll configure you linux pc

  • for debian: /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf -> send host-name "yourhostname";

  • for rhel: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts

Go to you Windows 2008 (r2) server : Server Manager -> DHCP Server -> your server -> IPv4 ->properties. Go to DNS tab and check last option - dynamically update DNS A and PTR records for .... NT 4.0

Then go to Advanced Tab: DNS dynamic updates registration credentials - Credentials, and set credentials from which name DHCP will be updating DNS records. (without this it won`t work) Alexey

Solution 2:

There are a couple of ways this can happen; there are pros and cons to each approach.

First is the "simple" way to do it (which just means fewer moving parts); having the ubuntu boxes send DNS update commands to the DNS server. nsupdate is the means for this, it's in the dnsutils package. The major caveat here is that unauthenticated updates will need to be turned on in your DNS zones, which can pose a pretty nasty security risk - names that applications/systems like to use for service discovery ("wpad", "teredo", "puppet") are ripe for the hijacking.

Second option is to configure the DHCP service to inject the records for you. Seems like this is what you were trying to do. Some things to check to make that work the way you're expecting:

  • Make sure the DNS zone has secure dynamic updates enabled
  • Check that you have "Dynamically update DNS A and PTR records for DHCP clients that do not request updates" set
  • Check that you're using the "Always" setting for dynamic registration on the DHCP server
  • Make sure you're sending the DHCP clients a DNS suffix - the DHCP server can't update DNS if it doesn't have a zone to put them in. (the hostname you're sending in your dhclient.conf should be a fully-qualified domain name; that might be why that's not working)

Oh, and assuming your DNS is AD-integrated, don't combine both methods - you'll end up with AD object permissions issues when the DHCP server tries to update something that was already inserted by the host.