I don't have a system at present to test this, but there is a file /lib/libnss_wins.so, so it could work if you put wins in your /etc/nsswitch.conf on the hosts line like this hosts: files dns6 wins Theoretically, at least, this should mean that if the hostname isn't found in the hosts file or in dns, a wins server will be queried. I don't know if it works or what will have to be configured if it doesn't, but it's worth a try regards Anders On Wednesday 10 October 2001 13.18, Dunphy Richard-rdunph01 wrote:
As other's have said the NetBios name to IP address mapping is rather complicated. So rather than dwell on it, i'll try and help with your original request, pinging the windows clients from linux.
Firstly a little info on NetBios names, etc. When two computers power up on the network, each has to announce itself to the windows network. Depending on the OS, and it's presence in the network topology (server, workstation, PDC, etc.) each has a certain value. Win9x falls to the bottom while NT Server as PDC is top! Tha aim is for the machine with the highest value to become the "Browser Master". If 2 machines of the same type try, then the first one there wins, or if the 2 come on at the same time, they back off for a random period of time and retry, where again first one to get there becomes the master. The "Browser Master" then caches the NetBIOS names for the network.
Anyway, to cut a (very) long story short, while ping isn't so easy, there is another utility to resolve NetBIOS names to IP addresses and vica versa. nmblookup can query the WINS servers, or even a PC.
e.g. nmblookup -A 172.43.56.112 will give me the NetBIOS name. while nmblookup -U server -R 'name' will do a name query on a WINS server if you have one running.
Do a man nmblookup for more info.
On windows, there is a way to do a similar thing, but I can't remember how just now.
Hope that's of use.
RikD.
-----Original Message----- From: Tom Wesley [mailto:tawesley@yahoo.com] Sent: 09 October 2001 18:33 To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: [SLE] NT Networking problems
Hi,
I've just installed a SuSE 7.0 box onto our work nt network. All the machines on the network us dhcp to get their ip info and all works fine for them. With the linux machine it gets it's ip and nameserver, so all the external www works fine. In fact the whole network connection works, all but one thing. If I try to ping a local machine by it's hostname then it cannot be found. But if I try using their IP it all works ok. Anyone know what I've missed?
Cheers, Tom
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