The dhcp package comes with both a client and a server program for using DHCP. If you want to install it, the instructions can be found at . Note that if you only want to use the client, you do not need to run the server and so do not need the startup script and links provided for the server daemon. Note that to use the client, you still need to alter your ethnet script as described in the next section. You only need to run the DHCP server however, if you're providing this service to a network, and it's likely that you'll know if that's the case; if it isn't, don't run the server! To configure the client, you need to modify the /etc/sysconfig/network-devices/ifconfig.eth0 file (or the appropriate one for the interface you are running DHCP on) you created earlier by adding the appropriate DHCP_PROG , DHCP_START and DHCP_STOP values. Then create the /etc/dhclient.conf using the following command: cat > /etc/dhclient.conf << "EOF" # dhclient.conf interface "eth0"{ prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1; request subnet-mask, broadcast-address, time-offset, routers, domain-name, domain-name-servers, host-name; require subnet-mask, domain-name-servers; } # end dhclient.conf EOF