Very Computer

I only know enough about networking to make me dangerous...

I am using a Linksys DSL Router w/4-port switch to run a small home
network, sharing the DSL Internet connection.

I used to have 4 Windows boxes on this network, but I recently
switched one of them to being a Linux file server (SuSe Pro 8.0).

On the Linux box, I can get to the Web via a browser, and I can ping
the other nodes on the home network by their IP addresses.  But if I
try to ping them by name, I get a "not found" message.  Here's what I
find to be a kicker, tho: on the same Linux box, if I ping an
*Internet* node by name, that works, i.e. if I ping www.yahoo.com it
works.

From any of the Windows boxes (2 XP and 1 2000 Server) I can ping the
Linux box by IP but not by name.  Another thing I find puzzling: I've
set up a Samba share on the Linux box and I can map a drive to it from
the Win2K box, using its *name*!  But I can't ping it from there using
its name!

So, I'm guessing the Linux box must be using my DSL-provider's DNS
servers to resolve hostnames like "www.yahoo.com", but what is
supposed to resolve my local nodenames for it?  Are my local nodenames
NetBIOS names?  If so, where does the translation LOCAL_NODENAME ->
LOCAL_IP_ADDR take place?  Why does this work between any two of the
existing Windows boxes but not to or from the Linux box?

I wouldn't bother with this, except for the nagging suspicion that if
I can't ping by name, there's likely some other functionality that's
broken, too.

Thanks for any help...

You need an internal DNS for your local LAN.

If you don't want to go through that trouble and all of your machines have
static IPs you can have host files on each of them (linux and windows
although the host file is different) that contains the hostname and the ip
address for it.

Quote:> I only know enough about networking to make me dangerous...

> I am using a Linksys DSL Router w/4-port switch to run a small home
> network, sharing the DSL Internet connection.

> I used to have 4 Windows boxes on this network, but I recently
> switched one of them to being a Linux file server (SuSe Pro 8.0).

> On the Linux box, I can get to the Web via a browser, and I can ping
> the other nodes on the home network by their IP addresses.  But if I
> try to ping them by name, I get a "not found" message.  Here's what I
> find to be a kicker, tho: on the same Linux box, if I ping an
> *Internet* node by name, that works, i.e. if I ping www.yahoo.com it
> works.

> From any of the Windows boxes (2 XP and 1 2000 Server) I can ping the
> Linux box by IP but not by name.  Another thing I find puzzling: I've
> set up a Samba share on the Linux box and I can map a drive to it from
> the Win2K box, using its *name*!  But I can't ping it from there using
> its name!

> So, I'm guessing the Linux box must be using my DSL-provider's DNS
> servers to resolve hostnames like "www.yahoo.com", but what is
> supposed to resolve my local nodenames for it?  Are my local nodenames
> NetBIOS names?  If so, where does the translation LOCAL_NODENAME ->
> LOCAL_IP_ADDR take place?  Why does this work between any two of the
> existing Windows boxes but not to or from the Linux box?

> I wouldn't bother with this, except for the nagging suspicion that if
> I can't ping by name, there's likely some other functionality that's
> broken, too.

> Thanks for any help...

|So, I'm guessing the Linux box must be using my DSL-provider's DNS
|servers to resolve hostnames like "www.yahoo.com", but what is

Correct.

|supposed to resolve my local nodenames for it?  Are my local nodenames

Nothing, since you haven't set any local DNS server up. Your computers
are probably getting dynamic IPs by DHCP from your router and so it
would be hard to assign them a mapping, although some DHCP servers can
send a update to a DNS server, but that's complicated to explain here.
If you had assigned static addresses to your machines you could put
entries in /etc/hosts to map them. This is what people with small
networks who don't want to run DNS do. The corresponding file on Windows
is lmhosts.

|NetBIOS names?  If so, where does the translation LOCAL_NODENAME ->
|LOCAL_IP_ADDR take place?  Why does this work between any two of the
|existing Windows boxes but not to or from the Linux box?

Netbios names are resolved using netbios protocols, which is why Windows
machines can find each other without DNS.

So in summary: either continue to use IP addresses, nothing is wrong
with that; or assign static addresses to your computers and use
/etc/hosts to map them to names, or do that anyway and hope that the
current addresses assigned by your router won't change under you.

Thank you both for your replies.  Think I understand what's happening now.

Cheers.