[Bug 270395] Re: cannot resolve windows host name

[Tor Sjowall]

This problem is still unsolved.

The host names of windows PCs are not visible to Linux programs with a regular installation of Samba,
i.e. from Linux 'ping win_pc' does not work, but from windows 'ping linux_pc' does work.

Also, 'nmblookup win_pc' works, while 'nslookup win_pc' does not work.

Installing winbind and changing the nsswitch.conf's host: definition to 'host: files dns wins' fix the problem. 
This is not obvious to a naive user.

I suggest changing the host definition in nsswitch.conf on installation of winbind
I also suggest installing winbind together with Samba

This would improve the user experience when working in a mixed Ubuntu/Windows network environment.
The whole point of the Samba package is to make it possible to work in such a mixed environment.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/270395

Title:
  cannot resolve windows host name

Status in “samba” package in Ubuntu:
  Won't Fix

Bug description:
  Ubuntu 8.04.1 AMD64

  Linux set 2.6.24-19-generic #1 SMP Wed Aug 20 17:53:40 UTC 2008 x86_64 GNU/Linux
  Samba 3.0.28a-1ubuntu4.5

  Binary hint samba

  I cannot resolve Windws host names for other computers on my LAN.

  ping <host>

  where <host> is a Windows computer name fails.

  To fix this I had to:

  1) Install winbind

  2) manually edit /etc/samba/smb.conf:

  #======================= Global Settings =======================

  [global]

     name resolve order = lmhosts bcast wins host

  
  3) manually edit /etc/nsswitch.conf

  hosts:          files dns wins

  
  Since this is an easy fix and since this is definitely an essential feature, can't these settings be used by default?

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