The first simple solution that lights on my mind is (without recompiling):

1) Configure DHCP to use reservations: the same host gets the same IP based
on MAC address.
2) Configure a caching DNS server and point all of your clients there.
Define a bogus domain for your goal and add all clients to its zone; 
alternatively just edit each machine hosts file adding to it the amanda
server, then edit the amanda server hosts file and add all clients IPs and
names.
3) Configure amanda to backup the clients according to the names you wrote
on hosts files.

Despite of this "raw" but functional solution I strongly suggest you to make
use of a real DNS; just install bind on the Amanda server and configure an
authoritative zone for backup names :) On the clients put the amanda server
as primary DNS and your old ones as secondary and tertiary (this to assure
proper DNS resolution even if the amanda server goes down). 

Bye!

Hope to be of help.

------------

Stefano Coletta
http://www.mindcreations.com 

> -----Messaggio originale-----
> Da: owner-amanda-users AT amanda DOT org 
> [mailto:owner-amanda-users AT amanda DOT org] Per conto di S. Keel
> Inviato: sabato 19 luglio 2003 1.40
> A: Amanda Users
> Oggetto: FQDNs in .amandahosts
> 
> 
> Hello everyone, I have a problem with using FQDNs in my 
> .amandahosts file on both the backup server and the client 
> machines.  I am planning a backup of several machines inside 
> a private network, without any DNS.  So I'm concerned that 
> the backup will fail because none of the machines would 
> actually resolve.
> 
> My network is a small lab network 192.168.1.0/24 setup inside 
> a firewall. There isn't any DNS inside the network, and with 
> the exception of 3 Linux machines (one of which is the backup 
> server with tape drive attached), all the other 13 clients 
> are Win2k/XP machines in a workgroup who get their IPs from 
> DHCPd running on the firewall.
> 
> Is it possible to use IP addresses in .amandahosts inside 
> such a network, or, since all of the machines that I want to 
> backup are behind the firewall, can I do ./configure 
> --without-amandahosts?  If the latter, then how does amanda 
> know to allow connections to/from the backup server?
> 
> Thanks,
> Stefan
>