monline

Unfortunately the dhcp3-client package in Debian does not support (yet) the sending of the configured hostname to the DHCP server. Ubuntu has a custom patch that makes this possible (it was added 4 years ago!), but the Debian package maintainer did not feel this to be important enough to add a patch to Debian's package too. The bugreport on the issue is now 9 years old and a solution for Debian users/admins is still not available (apart from hard coding the hostname into the DHCP client config file of course). It seems that the latest upstream version (>=4.2.0) of the DHCP client already contains support for sending the actual hostname to the DHCP server (btw. 4.2.0 was released in December 2009), but this will get into Debian only with the next major version (the one that'll follow Squeeze, currently codename "Wheezy"). No rush ... we can wait a couple of more years ... maybe a fix'll be available by the time my (future) kids try to install linux on their PC/mobile/watch/whatever. You've got to love Debian's "stableness". It's either that or you can try your luck with the ever changing (and breaking) Ubuntu. Unfortunately there's nothing in between. Of course one can always turn to a different distro ... RedHat, etc.