Re: DHCP Issues

[Ted Lemon <mellon fugue com>]

Generally speaking, the tack that O.S. vendors have taken with regard to the 
hostname option is that they ignore what the server sends.   The only 
exception of which I am aware outside of various Linux examples is Sunos.   
So for instance both Windows and Mac machines declare themselves 
authoritative as to their hostname, and send it to the server, with the 
expectation that the server will update the DNS.  Windows clients can even 
update the DNS themselves if the proper authentication infrastructure is in 
place.

The ISC DHCP client is neutral on this, because when we wrote it we were 
following the spec, and wanted to allow the user to choose whether to send a 
hostname or accept a hostname.   But at this point my personal experience on 
this is that accepting a hostname isn't helpful.   The hostname is an 
attribute that belongs with the host, not one that the host should accept 
from the server.

So if it were my decision, I would allow the user to specify a hostname in the 
nm UI, or just accept what the init scripts set up, and I would tell the DHCP 
client to send that.