SCO Unix OSR5 DHCP

Early SCO Unix had no DHCP client capability. That perhaps was somewhat reasonable; these machines were servers and could be expected to have a static IP address. However, as DHCP can do much more than simply provide an IP address, having DHCP would have been advantageous at times.

SCO first added DHCP client support in their 5.0.6 release and released a TLS 711 supplement for 5.0.5. That had some issues, as noted here. The DHCP server (first seen in the 5.0.5 release) had its issues to, though mostly just confusion with older protocols; SCO folk weren't used to this new-fangled DHCP stuff.

The older protocols got confused too. The HP Printer manager defaulted to bootp, and that caused unexpected problems for folks who did not realize that they were configuring an inactive protocol.

SCO's DHCP server could handle multiple subnets (something still beyond the capability of many inexpensive routers).

SCO's DHCP server was also a bit confusing because it had two separate "managers": - the Address Allocation Manager, which defined the range(s) of addresses the server could hand out, and the DHCP Server Manager, which defined options. Running these produced to files that youa could hand edit: /etc/aasd.conf and /etc/dhcpd.conf.

Here are examples of what those files look like: Sco dhcp configuration example.

Windows 98 machines could cause mysterious "ping sendto failed messages" in syslog. The fix to /etc/dhcpd.conf was easy enough.

Apparently SCO IPX (old Netware) could confuse things also.

SCO expected hostnames to be no more than 8 characters. That caused problems for this person as their ISP insisted on a longer name.

Another bug/feature had to do with static ip's forced onto machines not updating.

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