"Allan Bruce" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<bn1nfq$aa5$(E-Mail Removed)>...
> "John Thomas Langton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed) om...
> > "Allan Bruce" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:<bmn4kp$nr0$(E-Mail Removed)>...
> > > "John Thomas Langton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> > > news:(E-Mail Removed) om...
> > > > So, I've got samba and debian and everything is working fine, but the
> > > > linux machine doesn't resolve windows names. I can use the smbclient
> > > > to access windows shares, but I just want to make sure I understand
> > > > this.
> > > >
> > > > When I'm at my linux machine and to >ping "machinename" it says server
> > > > not found (although it can find the IP address). So, is there a way
> > > > to remedy this or is it that Windows uses their own name resolution
> > > > stuff and I just always have to use smbclient if I want to access a
> > > > windows machine from linux?
> > > >
> > > > please respond to my email address: (E-Mail Removed)
> > > >
> > > > thanks,
> > > > John
> > >
> > > post to the group, reply to the group.
> > >
> > > You need to add your windows machine(s) to the /etc/hosts file
> > >
> > > HTH
> > > Allan
> >
> > Thanks. The only problem I see with that is my network is using dhcp
> > thus the machines have changing ip addresses. I think in the
> > etc/hosts file you have to specify the ip thus I'd be updating this
> > file everyday. Let me know if you have any other ideas.
>
> In that case, what is acting as your dhcp server? This could be resolved by
> making lookups to the dhcp server, or by setting up a dns server (a bit
> overkill perhaps)
>
> >
> > Also, if you could point me to a resource that might be able to point
> > out the difference between networking with windows and linus (i.e. why
> > linux would automatically see another linux machine but not a windows
> > machine...or is that the case?)
> >
>
> Not sure of any off-hand, lookup wins resolution in google for the windows
> side. Both machines handle networking similarly, just with some subtle
> differences. The name resolution should be an easy problem to solve, can I
> ask why you are using dhcp? I have found it a lot easier to allocate static
> IPs and this will solve your hostname problem.
> Allan
Thanks very much for everyone's feedback and help!
Alan, could you point me to what I should look at for making lookups
to the dhcp server? Right now I'm using a linksys router, so that
might pose problems.
I use dhcp because my network is always changing, people show up with
laptops and wirelessly connect.
I think DNS would be overkill, although educational. I might try the
mac adresses in the hosts file as well, although I've never heard of
that.
From my reading thus far (and please correct me if I'm wrong), windows
networking is different from linux in that it is based on an archaic
protocol started by IBM called NetBIOS. Everyone has wanted to be
compatable, and so though the hardware it was written for is no
longer, the protocol remains. WINS is for inter-subnet negotiation of
the protocol. SMB is just for one subnet. And I don't think linux
uses this at all, that's why you have to download samba to do windows
networking. I think linux has no abstraction above tcp/ip, so you can
use dns, or something like ssh, but there is no "network neighborhood"
like thing for linux.
Again, please correct me if I'm wrong.
thanks,
John