Jeffrey Barish wrote:
When two or more Windows PCs are on a network, they hold an election to see which machine will be the master browser. The machine that wins keeps a table of what machine is where and has what address. This is how Network Neighborhood gets populated; it consults with the master browser.Haim Ashkenazi wrote:Jeffrey Barish wrote:I have 3 computers on my home network. The Windows machines are connected to each other using ICS. I can ping one Windows machine from another Windows machine simply by naming the destination: ping windowsB from machine windowsA will elicit a response. I can also ping my Linux machine from a Windows machine by name: ping linuxA from machine windowsA will elicit a response. However, I cannot ping one of the Windows machines by name from the Linux machine, only by IP number. I get the message 'unknown host windowsA.' I am using DHCP to assign IP numbers on the network, so it is important that I be able to reach machines by name as the IP numbers change. I'm not even sure where to start looking to resolve this problem, so any guidance would be appreciated.if your dhcp server is the linux, you can use a package like dhcp-dns or something similar (depending on what dns server you're using). Bye -- HaimAlas, the DHCP server is one of the Windows machines. Funny thing is, I'm not even sure which one -- how would one know? I suspect that it's the Windows NT machine (the other is Windows 98). Clearly, some software somewhere in Windows-land is resolving the names for theWindows machines. Why doesn't it do the same for the Linux machine? What is the software that does it? How can I figure out where itresides? Perhaps I should make the linux machine the DHCP server. However, I hate fiddling with network settings in Windows-land as that portion of the network is working fine.
When you ping from one Windows PC to another, it first tries its native protocol (smb/Network Neighborhood-style); then if it doesn't find a match it'll fall back to using the DNS. (The order/behaviour can be configured by the administrator.)
Linux on the other hand doesn't participate in this smb-style communication unless Samba is installed. So whereas the Windows machines can find each other via smb and have it look like they're finding each other via TCP/IP, Linux can't find the Windows machines, unless, as mentioned, Samba is installed/configured properly.
I suspect that you have a switch/router/DHCP server that is functioning as the DHCP server, rather than one of the Windows machines being the DHCP server.
Unless I'm not understanding your network, or what you're saying, then one fix is to "apt-get install samba" and get it properly configured. Another fix (possibly easier than learning the ins-and-outs of Samba) is to configure your DHCP server to feed "Reserved" addresses to each client, and then to add the appropriate lines in /etc/hosts for each client. A Reserved address works similarly to a static address, but allows the clients to remain configured as DHCP clients rather than static clients. This is probably the route I'd go for a small network.
-- Kent