To set DHCP client for Solaris, follow these steps, as root: 1. touch /etc/dhcp.hme0 replace the ".hme0" with whatever the ethernet interface for your system might be, as shown by ifconfig -a 2. cp /dev/null /etc/hostname.hme0 You need to make SURE that this file is EMPTY - otherwise, DHCP configuration won't work. 3. Make sure that /etc/inet/hosts only has one line in it, the one containing 127.0.0.1 localhost loghost Any other lines will be deleted and any additional necessary lines will be added by the DHCP client at boot time. 4. delete /etc/defaultrouter file. Since the DHCP client software will manage automatically we don't need it. 5. edit /etc/resolv.conf and put your DNS configuration as usual. 6. Edit the file /etc/nsswitch.conf and look at the hosts: line. By default, it reads files ; change it to read hosts: files dns. This will enable your machine to resolve addresses using DNS, the Domain Name System. Okay if you have followed all my Instructions, Solaris machine is ready to get its networking information via DHCP. Reboot your machine. You will see status messages during boot about the DHCP client, this is normal. Once the machine is booted type the "ifconfig -a" command. You will see output similar to this: $ ifconfig -a hme0: flags=849 mtu 8232 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000 eth0: flags=4843 mtu 1500 inet 66.65.63.238 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 66.65.63.255 ether 8:0:20:9f:37:f1 Type "hostname" to see if it says "unknown." If so, DHCP did not provide a hostname. One workaround is to edit /etc/init.d/network file and comment the line: #hostname="unknown" and I replace by hostname='cat /etc/nodename' In this way the "real hostname" must to be written in /etc/nodename as usual (without DHCP) and we can change it easyly in a future.

Go to the following link and all of your questions will be answered: http://www.rite-group.com/consulting/solaris_dhcp.html Mike

Michael, I've already red your article but didn't work at all for me. With my method you don't need to add any special startup script and you can change in the future the name machine as you do it normaly without DHCP installed, that's it: just changing /etc/nodename file. The same problem of "unknouwn" name is present after install Solaris 9. Don't ask me why Sun didn't resolve this problem in the new OS (Solaris9) Dino