[Server-devel] DNS question for East Timor deployment

[Jerry Vonau]

Hi Tom:

Which variant of the AU-XS are running F9 or F11?

On Mon, 2011-07-11 at 14:07 -0400, Tim Moody wrote:
> 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.
> 
That would be the easist to implement. 

> 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.
> 
No need to have the XS serving up dhcp, just have WAP handout the XS's
ip for DNS, that service is left active on the XS. 


> 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.
> 
"schoolserver" is hardcoded in several places in the XS/XO's, that won't
work well for moodle.  


> 
> > 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.
> >
That is because of the hardcoding of schoolserver on the XOs.


> > 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 ?
> >
Should be on by default, have the dhcp server handout the XS's ip as the
nameserver and you should be good to go.

Check /etc/resolv.conf on the XS, should be pointing to 127.0.0.1.


> > 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

As a workaround you could use the /etc/hosts file on the XOs, and
populate it with info for the XS.

Jerry