Re: Is Windows beating Linux behind a Linksys box?

From: tom (wolfemet_at_ameritech.net)
Date: 04/30/04 

Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 17:33:24 GMT

"Rod Smith" <rodsmith@nessus.rodsbooks.com> wrote in message
news:a9sj6c-5u2.ln@speaker.rodsbooks.com...
> In article <Qgbjc.174$es3.144@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com>,
> "tom" <wolfemet@ameritech.net> writes:
> >
> > What is ISC's dhcpd?
>
> The most common DHCP server for Linux:
>
> http://www.isc.org
>
> As to the original problem of getting constant names for computers when
> the IP addresses change because they're assigned by a broadband router's
> DHCP server, another option is to use NetBIOS names. (This is the Windows
> naming system to which Grant Edwards referred earlier.) Windows systems
> will do this automatically, but for Linux, you need to edit
> /etc/nsswitch.conf. Specifically, look for the hosts line:
>
> hosts: files dns
>
> This line may include other ways to resolve names. Whatever it contains,
> you can add "wins" to the list of tools:
>
> hosts: files dns wins
>
> This tells the system to use NetBIOS names if it can't find a name in any
> other way. If your Windows systems have file sharing enabled and if you
> run Samba (or at least nmbd) on your Linux systems, you should then be
> able to address your computers via their configured NetBIOS names. (In
> the case of Linux systems, you may need to set the "netbios name"
> parameter in smb.conf to register a name for the system.)
>
> A couple of caveats: NetBIOS has no idea about DNS domain names. Thus, if
> you use this system, some programs may choke because they won't be able
> to determine their own domain names. This is pretty rare, in my
> experience; the only program I've encountered that runs into issues
> because of this is knews. Also, these programs would probably choke if
> you don't use any other name resolution system, too. Another potential
> problem is DNS/NetBIOS name confusion. If a system registers a particular
> NetBIOS name, but if it's also known by another DNS hostname, or if
> another system uses the same DNS hostname as the first system registers
> via NetBIOS, you may run into problems because of these mismatches.
>
> Overall and IMHO, using NetBIOS names can be a quick and simple solution
> if all your systems already register NetBIOS names, particularly on small
> networks when you don't want to invest time and effort into configuring
> the ISC DHCP server and your own DNS server. Using static IP addresses
> and /etc/hosts entries can also be a good approach in these cases,
> though, and is less likely to cause problems related to the lack of DNS
> domain names in the NetBIOS system. I haven't tried it, but the dnsmasq
> program to which an earlier poster referred looks like a potentially good
> solution, too.
>
I tried your solution and I cannot get it to work.

I have samba set up on two machines and it works
fine. I can use IE on the windows box, type
in LinuxMachineName in IE, and get the web site
on the Linux machine.

The problem I am having is communicating between
the two linux machines. I can only ping the other machine
using ip addresses. The two machines dont know
each other by name.

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