[TriLUG] Fixed or dynamic IP addresses? Dual IP addresses on same port?

[Scott G. Hall]

OK, I give up!  I have 3 machines running Linux (Mandrake 8.2, RedHat 8.0,
Xandros 1.0), each has been installed similarly as both a development
workstation and and server machine (pretty much the same mixed of packages,
excluding the Win4lin parts of Xandros).

I also have a router/switch acting as an Internet gateway, firewall, and
DHCP server.  Currently all of the machines are configured to dynamically
get their IP addresses from the DHCP server on the router/switch.

Now my dilemma: I want to startup FTP and HTTP servers on my private LAN,
as well as allow for the r* utilities (rlogin, rcp, etc) and NFS shares.
Do I still want to use dynamic IP addressing?  Or do I need to switch over
to only static addressing?

The problem I am experiencing is that gethostbyname() is failing to even
find to host machine's name, much less any other machine's name.  The hosts
names appear in the DHCP map on the router's configuration table, but there
does not seem to be a local DNS port from the router/switch.  SAMBA names
and shares are working fine, and I could always use SAMBA shares.  But I
want to use the standard UNIX way of doing things (standard TCP/IP utilities
and protocols, not LAN manager).

When I was working at a facility a couple of years ago, they had configured
2 IP addresses for the same physical port, or order to provide both client
and server functions out of the same machine, as well as serving other 
clients
on the LAN.

Is it possible to setup multiple IP addresses for the same interface in
Linux?  I.E., can I setup a "eth0.1", "eth0.2" and so on?  (I don't remember
my "arp" commands and stuff to make this work, much less do I know if it is
even possible in Linux.)

This would allow me to setup dynamic IP addressing for each machine, and
still have static IP addressing for server processes from the same machines.

-- 
Scott G. Hall,
Raleigh, NC, USA
ScottGHall at BellSouth.Net