Name resolution in small network

[Ramon Hofer]

On Thu, 21 Jul 2011 17:26:04 -0400, Tom H wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 4:42 PM, don fisher <hdf3 at comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>> I have a bunch of laptops currently running a mix of Linux and Windoz.
>> I have recently tried to bring up Samba so that I could share files
>> easily. With the Linux systems, I have always used /etc/hosts to
>> resolve names. But with the addition of Samba and the Microsoft
>> products, this does not work (at least as far as I know).
>>
>> I have a router that provides DHCP name resolution. If I use DHCP with
>> my Linux hosts, Windoz reads the router and resolved their IP address.
>> But I do not know how to make Linux read the router and resolve the
>> Windoz DHCP addresses.
>>
>> I have tried to purchase and read the literature, but every volume
>> appears to be around 400 pages long:-( I cannot read that fast. I see
>> references to broadcasts, WINS servers etc., all suggesting that I
>> purchase another book to discover how they work:-)
>>
>> Is there a simple DNS that I can set up that can be loaded with my
>> /etc/hosts data, read the data in the DHCP router, handle a NAS device,
>> and whatever else may be required.
> 
> I'm partial to bind as a dns service but it's probably overkill for a
> home network. I've seen many recommendations to use dnsmasq in your
> situation; I've never used it so hopefully someone else can vouch for
> it.
> 
> Ubuntu's Avahi and Windows' SSDP should allow you to access each other
> using hostnames.

I've had a similar problem on a little Alix board [1] running Ubuntu 
Server 10.04.

I used dhcp3-server and bind9. Caching of external adresses worked but I 
couldn't resolve LAN adresses.
Today I almost just copied the setting from a german website [2].

About an hour later everything works like a charm.


[1] http://pcengines.ch/alix.htm
[2] http://www.martin-bock.de/pc/pc-0604.html