Change to static IP addresses for all three machines.
This will effectively also force 'static hostnames'.
You will have to add a default route to the router on each machine.
Whether you turn off the DHCP server on the router is up to you, but
it would only be needed if you had for example a neighbour coming and
plugging in.
Geoff

On Mon, 5 Jul 2004 15:16:19 UTC, naima@bigfoot.com (A. Naim) wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I have just added a Linux (SuSE 9.1) machine to an existing home
> network with two Win98 computers. The router assigns IP addresses on a
> first-come-first-serve basis, so the IP of each machine depends on the
> boot order. However, while the Win98 machines "know their name", and
> are therefore always guaranteed to be identifiable by it, it seems
> that my linux machine gets its name from the DHCP server (the router),
> so occasionally it ends up with a host name that belongs to one of the
> Win98 machines (because the DCHP client table has that name against
> the IP that was allocated to the linux machine). This means that I get
> the same name assigned to two different machines at the same time.
>
> How do I convince my machine to have its own name? just typing
> "hostname linmachine" does not solve the problem, because I can only
> do this after logging in, and by then the host name was already
> acquired from the router. Can anyone advise?