[ale] Problem with using dhcp and cable modem

[Thomas Ringate]

I am running Red Hat Linux release 5.2

I recently added a second NIC card to my Linux PC, and connected a cable modem to
that NIC card.  This arrangement requires me to configure the card to use dhcp, and to
execute a login program called rrlogin.

Everything is working fairly well, except for one thing.

Prior to adding the dhcp I had a name of "bandit" for my host name.  I have a local
LAN with three WIN98 machines using the Linux PC as a file server with samba. The
share name the WIN98 machines use is "bandit".

Now because of the dhcp addition my host name has been changed to 142hfc222 which
is a combination of the IP address dhcp has assigned to me, and the letters hfc.  dhcp also
generates a new resolv.conf on each bootup with just the information that it expects to find there.

I would like to get back to having my host name be "bandit", particularly for samba.  I
do not want a dynamic host name that changes every few weeks.

I have tried the following:

the command "hostname" yields 142hfc222
If I enter "hostname bandit" my host name then
does change to "bandit" but samba still responds to 142hfc222.

When in command line mode, the prompt continues to show 142hfc222 rather than "bandit".

My suspicion is that I need to change the host name sometime before samba is started running,
and after dhcp has done it's thing, but my knowledge of Linux is very limited.
I feel extremely lucky just to have my machine working as well as it does.

Does anyone have some guidance for a beginner, on how to keep my original host name?

Keep in mind I have only figured out how to set all these things using the GUI that Red Hat
has built into their x-windows.

I have figured out how to edit and add a few things to rc.local and smb.conf
I have looked for a file called dhcpd.conf but I am unable to find any such file on my machine.

My environment prior to activating dhcp was a ppp dialup which worked perfectly,
and my host name did not change when I connected into my ISP.


Tom