On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 11:18 PM, Cedric Pradalier
<cedric.pradalier@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Does someone have some experience combining tools like dnsmasq and roscore?
>
> Dnsmasq is a simple to configure DHCP and DNS server. In the DHCP
> part, it is possible to send back a lot of information to connecting
> clients. It is normally used to send the DNS IPs and gateway, but can
> also send a NTP server IP and a lot of other things.
> I was wondering if someone has tried to send the ROS_MASTER_URI back
> in the DHCP info.

Getting dnsmasq to SEND this data should be relatively
straightforward.  I believe dhcp option codes 224-254 are reserved for
private use (http://www.rfc-archive.org/getrfc.php?rfc=3942).  You
should be able to add something to dnsmasq like:

dhcp-option-force=230,http://buildingmaster:11311

>
> It would be nice to plug a laptop to the network, and tadaaa, all the
> new nodes I start can join the local ros network without any manual
> configuration.

This is going to be somewhat harder to implement as it will require
extending the behavior of the DHCP client for any laptop in use on
your network.  I've never done this before.  But the man-pages:
"dhclient.conf", "dhclient-script", and "dhcp-options" should have all
the information you need.

Good luck!
--Jeremy