Solved: "mount error: could not resolve address for <hostname>. No address associated with hostname"

This error may happen when trying to mount a cifs/smbfs share, be it either via fstab or command line. Most people seem to either not have the problem or circumvent it by using static IPs instead of hostnames, which will work only as long as the IPs don't change. Funnily enough, it seems that for some people the problem is exactly the other way around, IPs won't work, only the hostname. Weird. This is also kind of funny/infuriating as the share will be readily accessible via konqueror, and perhaps some other file managers that can reach samba shares, and the name will be there.

Anyway, the way I found to fix it for me was to add "wins" on the /etc/nsswitch.conf file. I had "wins" previously installed for some reason, probably due to some earlier attempt at doing the same thing, but as it seems, the installation process does not change the configuration files as needed to actually work.

Here's the line I added "wins" to:


And here's where I found it: http://ubuntu-virginia.ubuntuforums....36&postcount=8 (in Spanish)

Nearly at the end of this lengthy post.