Home network -- DNS/Directory services

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mlcarson

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 12, 2009
Messages
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I've only got 3-4 PC's on my network. Is there any reason on such a small network to do any central administration of services? I'm thinking of just copying a common host file, group file, and user file. DHCP services are done by my router with reservations.
 
You could, but such manual processes are always prone to mistakes and missed updates. I'd look into using something like Ansible or Puppet to keep that info (plus any other common configs) up to date. If you want to get a little more sophisticated, there's always FreeIPA (kinda like Active Directory for Linux).

The DHCP server, set up properly, should automatically update in DNS the IP addresses of any leases. I wouldn't bother with a hosts file.
 
Depends. I've done it with a similar network just for sake of learning and entertainment. For directory services, print servers, dns, routing, ftp, etc you can run it on just about anything. Ubuntu Server makes it really simple but leaves enough for you to dive in a little.
 
If you use something like Puppet/Chef/Ansible (etc).... those sort of things can push and help maintain centralized uniformity without your typical services based infrastructure.
 
I'm using a Sonicwall as my router -- it has DHCP services but doesn't appear to act as a DNS server. I agree that if I had a server setup for DHCP that it could also act as a DNS server.
BlueLineSwinger said:
The DHCP server, set up properly, should automatically update in DNS the IP addresses of any leases. I wouldn't bother with a hosts file.
Click to expand...

I've wanted to know more about Ansible/Chef/Puppet so I'll do a bit of research on that. I also act as the network engineer at work so could see Ansible helping in the management of our Juniper hardware.

For my home though, I don't see things changing enough to warrant much in automation. I never installed AD when I was running Windows at home so Linux shouldn't be any different.
 
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mlcarson said:
I'm using a Sonicwall as my router -- it has DHCP services but doesn't appear to act as a DNS server. I agree that if I had a server setup for DHCP that it could also act as a DNS server.


I've wanted to know more about Ansible/Chef/Puppet so I'll do a bit of research on that. I also act as the network engineer at work so could see Ansible helping in the management of our Juniper hardware.

For my home though, I don't see things changing enough to warrant much in automation. I never installed AD when I was running Windows at home so Linux shouldn't be any different.
Click to expand...

There's no need for any type of directory services in a home with so few systems unless you're testing/learning/masochist. ;)

I have 7 computers on my home network and DHCP is handled by the router with 4 IPs reserved for specific systems (media server, 2 DNS servers, printer). I use a custom DNS option though on the router to point my systems at my DNS servers. The computers are as follows: One for work which is controlled by Intune (Windows sadly :( ). The other 6 are all Linux. Two are DNS servers (Ubuntu LTS) which run Pi-Hole with Unbound and one of them runs my OpenVPN server. The others are my media server (Ubuntu LTS), my laptops (both Arch Linux), and the wife's laptop (Ubuntu 19.10). Just no need to run them through directory services when the only machine that has another user outside myself is the wife's laptop. :)
 
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