Linux Computer Names not found

[Eric "Shubes"]

Craig White wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-09-04 at 22:11 -0700, Dazed_75 wrote:
>> Whether I look at the DHCP Clients Table on my Linksys WRT54G, a
>> Network Neighborhood window in XP, a nbtstat -c or net view command
>> result in a command window, or a servers list in Ubuntu I only see
>> names for my Windows boxes and my TiVo unit.  The Linux boxes show up
>> in the DHCP client list of course but sans any name at all.  I can
>> ping the windows boxes by name from another windows box but not from
>> Linux. 
>>
>> 1) What makes the router recognize the box names for clients other
>> than Linux?  Can something in Linux be configured so the router knows
>> their names?
> ----
> wins/netbios - Linux uses DNS
> 
> It has nothing to do with the router per se.
> 
> What you can do is edit /etc/hosts and put entries with short names
> .i.e.
> 
> # cat /etc/hosts
> # Do not remove the following line, or various programs
> # that require network functionality will fail.
> 127.0.0.1               localhost.localdomain localhost
> 192.168.2.10            lin-workstation.azapple.com lin-workstation
> 192.168.2.20            win-workstation.azapple.com win-workstation
> ----
>> 2) I am guessing that the windows ping command gets box names from
>> something other than DNS or the HOSTS file.  Anyone know what?  Or if
>> Linux is using that ability (via Samba?) to find the Windows Network
>> boxes?  Could that facility be used to make the Linux box names known
>> to Windows boxes? 
> ----
> see above
> 
> Craig
> 
"wins" is one part of it, which simply handles name resolution akin to DNS. 
Adding your windoze boxes to the hosts file will let linux hosts see windoze 
hosts, but windoze might still not see linux.

You also need to consider the windows "browse master", which keeps track of 
the network hosts (for the windoze browse network functionality). This is 
kind of an elusive little devil. Any host on the network can be a browse 
master at any given point in time, depending on how you configure your 
hosts. You can also configure a (linux) samba server to be a browse master. 
If the samba server is always available, I'd configure it to always be the 
browse master.

Note, I don't believe you need wins/netbios to have browsing functionality. 
Browsing is supported by UDP/IP broadcasts.

-- 
-Eric 'shubes'