Re: My hostname not being registered via DHCP

From: Jim Patterson (jim-patterson_at_ncf.ca)
Date: 02/03/05

  • Next message: Jim Patterson: "Re: First time user of Red Hat - some simple questions" 
    Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2005 23:42:46 -0500

    UncleStoner wrote:
    > Thanks for taking the time to reply.
    >
    > I should have provided more high-level detail in my original post. I'm
    > actually on a corporate LAN, which hosts mostly windows boxes and whose
    > various services (DHCP, DNS, etc) are presumably provided by Windows as
    > well.
    >
    > I'm one of the few people in this environment trying to get a Linux box
    > up. My Windows boxes all have hostnames that I assign them, and they
    > all use DHCP. Somehow, they are able to get their names resolvable on
    > the network. I assumed that they did this by sending their names to
    > the DHCP server when they requested an IP (and all the other stuff a
    > DHCP client requests from a DHCP server), and then the DHCP server did
    > some magic, in conjunction with the DNS server, to make those hostnames
    > resolvable.

    DHCP and DNS is not likely how the Windows machines are discovering each
    other; it's usuall based on NETBIOS naming (though Windows does use DNS
    as well).

    You should be able to do the same from your RH8 box wit a little work:

    - Run SAMBA on your RH8 box. Just running the SAMBA server should be
    enough to get it to broadcast your hostname so other Windows machines
    will see it. However, you may need to do some configuration depending on
    how your LAN is set up (check out the Samba docs or http://www.samba.org
    for info).

    - Set up your own name resolution mechanism to check "wins". You can do
    this by editing the file /etc/nsswitch.conf . Look for a line like this:

            hosts: files dns

    and add the token "wins" to the end e.g.

            hosts: files dns wins

    At least, that works on FC3 and slackware 10. I don't know about Redhat
    8. In any case, what it should do is add a "wins" resolver to the
    resolver list for hostnames, so if the name resolver doesn't find a
    network hostname in the hosts file or from DNS it will try WINS next.
    You can check the man page for nsswitch.conf for more info.

    Hope this helps!

    Jim P.
    Ottawa

  • Next message: Jim Patterson: "Re: First time user of Red Hat - some simple questions"

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