Hi all, I have this new Solaris 8 box, and my cable modem company provides only dynamic IPs. How to config the box so I can connect to the internet ? Is it that I have to setup DHCP ? Thanks for help! Philip

DHCP is the answer. If you configure DHCP in Solaris it should be able to connect to the net for you. But be warned you may need your domain name(which you can get from your ISP).

Do I need to setup DHCP server and client together ? On Solaris 8, dhcpconfig is the command to start dhcp configuration. It actually helps you to setup the dhcp server first. I think all I need to setup is the client, right ? Becuase dhcp server is the ISP server, correct ? Thanks. Philip

As far as I know you are correct. The server is at your ISP's local building. All you should need to do is configure the client(your computer).

This reference may help. www.rite-group.com /consulting/solaris_dhcp.html

a. touch /etc/dhcp.eth0 replace the ".eth0" with whatever the ethernet interface for your system might be, as shown by ifconfig -a b. cp /dev/null /etc/hostname.eth0 You need to make SURE that this file is EMPTY - otherwise, DHCP configuration won't work. c. Make sure that /etc/inet/hosts only has one line in it, the one containing 127.0.0.1 localhost Any other lines will be ignored, and any additional necessary lines will be added by the DHCP client at boot time. e. touch /etc/notrouter this creates a file to tell Solaris that your system will not be performing routing or packet-forwarding duties. If the file is there leave it the way it is. f. cp /dev/null /etc/defaultrouter since the DHCP client software will automatically put the needed entries in this file, we just need to make sure that it exists as an empty file. If it already exists, rename it and create the empty file in its place. g. cp /dev/null /etc/resolv.conf the DHCP client will add the necessary entries. If you already have this file, rename it and create an empty file in its place. h. 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 le0: 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 i. check to make sure that the /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/defaultrouter files were configured by the DHCP client. 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 and replace all occurences of "unknown" with your real hostname.