Re: Unable to ping netbios names from linux

From: Budyanto Himawan (budyantohimawan_at_netscape.net)
Date: 01/25/04 

Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 04:03:02 GMT

Rod Smith wrote:
> Budyanto Himawan wrote:
>
>
>>I have set up samba on linux and I'am able to share
>>linux directories with my windows xp. I can also
>>ping the linux server from then windows xp but I can't
>>do the reverse. I can't ping xp from linux by name.
>>
>>I have set up xp to use the ip of the linux server for
>>its WINS server.
>>
>>smb.conf is set with the following:
>>wins support = yes
>>wins proxy = yes
>>
>> >From what I've read this should be sufficient to be
>>able to let linux ping netbios names. Since that
>>doesn't work I've also tried populating lmhosts with
>>ip and netbios name of xp and pass it with -H arg to
>>nmbd.
>
>
> Ordinarily, NetBIOS names are used only by Samba and related tools, which
> ping is not. Thus, registering the NetBIOS name of the XP box won't let
> you address it by name from Linux. In most cases, you can get it working
> by adding "wins" to the list of name-resolution methods on the "hosts"
> line in /etc/nsswitch.conf. Chances are this line looks like the
> following right now:
>
> hosts: files nisplus nis dns
>
> Try changing it to read as follows:
>
> hosts: files nisplus nis dns wins
>

Thanks you. This works. I had to enter ip to name mapping in lmhosts
though and run winbindd which comes with samba. This is quite complicated.

Putting just the names into /etc/hosts does work too and it seems much
simpler.

Thanks

> What this does is to tell Linux to use NetBIOS name resolution ("wins")
> after all other resolution methods ("file" for /etc/hosts, "nisplus" and
> "nis" for NIS+ and NIS, and "dns" for DNS). If I understand correctly,
> "wins" is actually a bit of a misnomer because a WINS server isn't
> actually required (it'll work off of broadcasts). I haven't looked into
> this in great depth, though. My guess is it takes some data from the
> smb.conf file, like the workgroup name.
>
> Other approaches to resolving this problem include adding the name and
> static IP address of the XP box to your local DNS server, adding the name
> and static IP address of the XP box to your Linux system's /etc/hosts
> file, and using the Samba "wins hook" parameter to link Samba with your
> DNS server to dynamically update the DNS server with NetBIOS names. (This
> last option is ugly and tedious to set up.)
>