Re: Informix and DHCP - why don't they mix?

Troy Horton wrote: > > Andy, > We use DHCP in the office and I connect to Informix just fine. > Where did you get the information that DHCP is not supported? > I'm afraid my connection only works because I wasn't aware of > the limitation. > Good Luck, > Troy Horton > > Andy wrote: > > > > I understand that Informix doesn't support clients which use DHCP > > to get tcp/ip addresses. However, does anyone know why? > > I'm trying to convince a network consultant that it > > doesn't work, as he want to install DHCP on all the clients, > > and I'd really like a definitive answer as to why, as neither > > him nor I can think of any technical reason. > > Has anyone got any good ideas? > > First, what version are you using? What platform are you using? DHCP and Informix don't mix well, and here's why. Informix has a brain dead idea of how to authenticate clients. It relies on UNIX's method of authentication. Using hosts.equiv or .rhosts, the client ip/hostname must reside in one of these files. Now, here's the problem with DHCP. The IP address is assigned dynamically from either a pool or a range of possible addresses. So what do you put in the hosts.equiv? Also, the hosts.equiv looks like this: IP_Address User list + + So in a sample case, larry.stooge.com larry, curly, moe curly.stooge.com + This means that only larry, curly and moe can log on from larry.stooge.com and anyone can log on from curly.stooge.com The problem is that this is not a good idea when trying to authenticate a PC versus another UNIX server. [Note. Don't get me started on .rhosts!] Now, here's a kicker. Someone tried just placing the IP address in /etc/hosts.equiv and it worked. Can anyone else verify this? I'm stuck in Cleveland and I don't have a running Informix database and a client to try this from. -Mike mikey at segel.com