Ping windows machines by name

d4mo · Guru Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 430

So I've tried to look online and can't find a staightforward answer. Is it NetBIOS that does it? If I understand correctly NetBIOS is a part of CIFS? Or is that incorrect?

Also if it is NetBIOS that does it, is there anyything I can install to get just the Naming support. I don't want to install samba just for that.

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 23100

As far as I know, WINS is the reason Windows machines can find hosts that have not been given proper DNS entries. Once WINS finds the name, the ping is done in the same way as if you entered the IP address explicitly, got the name from DNS, or had it in your /etc/hosts file. If you are dealing with a small number of statically addressed Windows machines, I would just put their names in /etc/hosts and call it done. If you have a large site, or if the machines change addresses, you will need to get a WINS resolver. I think net-fs/samba has such a resolver, but I do not use it. See man winbindd (yes, two Ds) for details. I think that you could run just winbindd without also providing full CIFS server, but I have never tried that, either.

John R. Graham · Posted: Thu May 21, 2009 2:32 pm Post subject:

I have yet to see a crappy little (i.e., home) router DHCP / DNS service that correctly provides name service for local machines but dnsmasq and bind both do. My advice would be to install dnsmasq on an appropriate machine and set it up to provide DNS and DHCP for your network. Of course, you'll have to disable those services in your home router.

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

szczerb · Posted: Thu May 21, 2009 2:53 pm Post subject:

John R. Graham · Posted: Thu May 21, 2009 3:03 pm Post subject:

Right you are. Here's a clarification: I have yet to see a crappy little (i.e., home) router DHCP / DNS service that out of the box correctly provides name service for local machines. I still recommend dnsmasq.

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

szczerb · Posted: Thu May 21, 2009 4:25 pm Post subject:

DD-WRT uses dnsmasq and the others also if I remember correctly

So basically it's the way to go ;] Although once I had an ambition to set up local bind and caching and with reading dhcpd leases...

d4mo · Guru Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 430

ok that may work(I've been using ddwrt for years). But it won't work for the Windows PC's to be able to ping the linux box by hostname....right?

John R. Graham · Posted: Thu May 21, 2009 6:13 pm Post subject:

Yes, it will. I've good cross-platform naming service in both directions supported by dnsmasq.

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

d4mo · Guru Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 430

So what service is sending the hostname out on the nix boxes to the dnsmasq then?

John R. Graham · Posted: Thu May 21, 2009 7:46 pm Post subject:

DHCP client.

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

szczerb · Posted: Thu May 21, 2009 8:39 pm Post subject:

And it's not a service ;]

krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

echo "windowsIPname1 windowscompname1" >> /etc/hosts

as simple as that, no programs needed. If your windows comp have statics ip of course.
so ping, ssh... windowscompname1 will be resolved to windowsIPname1

and there's also a file in windows that does the same thing for your linux computers. but i don't remember where/what is it, but pretty sure a windows user could point it out easy.

szczerb · Posted: Thu May 21, 2009 11:04 pm Post subject:

Malvineous · Posted: Fri May 22, 2009 1:26 am Post subject:

szczerb · Posted: Fri May 22, 2009 11:15 am Post subject:

But instead of setting up netbios name resolution you should just use a working DNS server ;/

d4mo · Guru Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 430

Well here's the deal. I turned on Local DNS on DDwrt. I can ping Windows computers from my nix box by name just fine. But I can't do it the other way around.

From what you guys are saing DHCP should be sending my hostname to DNSmasq on my router and I should need any part of samba to do it...correct? Or am I mistaken.

Also I don't use static IPs, so I don't want to do host file entries. I also just want to get this to work out of principle.

szczerb · Posted: Fri May 22, 2009 2:28 pm Post subject:

Did you get new leases for windows hosts after turning on local DNS?

d4mo · Guru Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 430

I believe so. The computer was turned off and not listed in DDwrt as having a lease. But i don't think that is the problem anyways. Because in DDwrt when you look at who is connected to your router it says what there host name is. It shows up for all my Windows machines, but my nix box just shows up as a *. Same as my 360, which I assume has no name.

szczerb · Posted: Fri May 22, 2009 2:43 pm Post subject:

Then your nix has a misconfigured dhcp client which doesn't send it's host name.

d4mo · Guru Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 430

Where would the setting be for that...or what would I be looking for?

d4mo · Guru Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 430

Ok, I kind of have it working. DD-wrt shows it as my host name. And on windows if I do a ping -a 192.168.xxx.xxx it shows my host name and the IP. But the weird thing is if I do a ping hostname on windows it says host in unreachable. Any idea why?

szczerb · Posted: Sat May 23, 2009 11:48 am Post subject:

Usually hosts are unreachable when there is no root to them...right? So do you have a fancy setup with multiple networks with different addresses or something?

d4mo · Guru Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 430

No, just a standard 192.168.1.x Class C network.

szczerb · Posted: Sat May 23, 2009 3:41 pm Post subject:

That's weird...like you don't have the route to the local network ;/

Malvineous · Posted: Sat May 23, 2009 11:58 pm Post subject:

When you say ping "192.168.xxx.xxx" you do realise that's up to 256 different class C networks? As in, if you're on 192.168.1.xxx and you try to ping 192.168.0.xxx you'll need a machine routing the traffic between the two subnets?