[Server-devel] DNS question for East Timor deployment

[Tim Moody]

You didn't mention the make and model of your WAP, but it sounds like it is 
acting as a dhcp server and a dns server.  When it hands the xo an ip addr 
it also says that it is the dns server (192.168.1.1).  I'm guessing the xos 
can find each other, just not the server.

Some wireless routers allow you to add static addresses to the dhcp/dns and 
some even discover them, but don't know the device name.  If yours does, 
just add 192.168.1.100 and tell the WAP that its name is Schoolserver.

If you want to use the XS as dns, I think you will need to use it as dhcp as 
well.  I know the AU-XS folks are working on a simple way to turn this on, 
but I'm not sure if it is in place yet.  In this case you need to turn dhcp 
off in your WAP.

What happens if you go into the networking maintenance section on the xo and 
tell it that your schoolserver is 192.168.1.100 rather than giving it a 
name?  Of course, this would be a clumsy approach because you would have to 
do it in every xo.


> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 09:08:16 +0930
> From: Tom Daly <tdaly61 at gmail.com>
> To: server-devel at lists.laptop.org
> Subject: [Server-devel] DNS question for East Timor deployment
> Message-ID: <31EB7C54-99FF-436F-B213-FA7C6CEF11BD at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Dear all,
>
> A colleague and I are working on a small XO deployment in East Timor and 
> are having trouble accessing the XS server from the XOs.  We are using the 
> Australian XS server software builds  and are using a wireless access 
> point that is NOT connected to the internet.  Our issue is that as we are 
> not connected to the internet we do not have *easy* access to a DNS 
> server. My first plan was to simply use the IP address from the XOs to 
> access the school server e.g. http://192.168.1.100 but the XOs still seem 
> to want to use DNS.
>
> Question: can I easily turn on DNS server on the XS given that we do not 
> have an internet connection ?
> If so how do I do this ?
>
> On the XO's :
> /etc/nsswitch.conf      says    files dns
> And /etc/resolv.conf appears to get the nameserver 192.168.1.1 entry when 
> the XO connects to the WAP for the first time.
>
> So
> XO Server ------------  WAP -------------- XS Server |
>
> thanks for any assistance
> Tom