Difference between DHCP options 'Domain-Name' and 'Domain-Search'

Question

What is the difference between the two?

I had thought that domain-name would put the client on the specified domain (ie. If the domain-name was set to "foo.bar" the clients FQDN would be 'hostname.foo.bar'), but http://linux.die.net/man/5/dhcp-options seems to imply that both options ('Domain-Name' and 'Domain-Search') simply specify a search domain.

If domain-name does not set the domain for the client, what option would?

Solution

The domain-name option specifies the client's domain name (of which there can only be one), and is specified in resolv.conf with the domain keyword. This is the domain which will be used when running hostname -f on the client.

The domain-search option specifies a list of domains to use when looking up bare hostnames, and is specified in resolv.conf with the search keyword. If this option isn't provided it defaults to the single domain provided by domain-name.

Comments

[Ray Foss]

A valid value is .local or maybe .company.com. The default of naked lookups is usually fine.