Having trouble mounting a windows drive on another computer in my LAN, by name.

Netbios name is MYNET Samba is set, has that name I see it the smb.conf
Windows computer name is COMP1
Shared drive on windows computer is named C
mount point in linux is /usr/winC

tried mount -t smbfs //MYNET.COMP1/C /usr/winC
get back timeout connecting to 208.69.32.130
That is my DNS server IP, that won't work. It is not going to find my computer through DNS.

However if I do mount -t smbfs 192.168.1.104/C /usr/winC, it works using the actual IP of COMP1.

I have tried other variations of the syntax and smbmount, but it only works with the explicit IP. If I use names I get back the DNS server error.

In smb4k, scanning network finds nothing. But if I manually scan for COMP1, it finds it and knows it is on MYNET. Then I can mount it from smb4k.

Same thing happens if I ping. ping COMP1 gets back pings from the DNS
If I ping by IP, it works as I want.

Sounds like a DNS resolution problem. Do you have DNS set up not just for the 'Net, but for your LAN as well?

If not, the quick & ugly solution is to put COMP1's info in /etc/hosts on the accessing box. If you have several accessing boxen, setting up multiple hosts files can get very old very quickly.

Longer term you might want to look at Dnsmasq, http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html. Especially note:

I not that expert at networking. Sure this is a DNS problem but to look up a local server name, DNS won't work. I have DNS set up through my router, goes to Comcast's DNS . Of course I only want DNS for the internet but I don't know how to remove it from the local network. I have a common router Lynksys WRT54G. I know how to use the hosts file but I have DHCP so the IP's can change. I could change to fixed IP's and then use hosts but I really need DHCP on my laptop. Besides, I just want to understand and solve this problem. I have posted this question on several forums and plenty of people have written name resolution works for them, but cannot point to any set up to fix it.

I found a few things in smb.conf that looked like the right area but did not work.
interfaces= eth0
dns proxy = no (this looks like exactly the right area but doesn't work set to either yes or no)

I am not familiar w/ your router (& you didn't supply a link), can it assign fixed IP addresses by MAC addresses? If so, you can have your cake & eat it too. Every box on your LAN will use DHCP, but will always be assigned the same IP. You can put these in hosts files & yet not have a problem connecting when you take your laptop elsewhere.

Found the problem. I had set up OpenDNS,fixed DNS address in the router on the LAN side (per OpenDNS instructions). Still have DHCP for IP. Apparently with this router (Linksys WRT54G) when you set a fixed DNS it no longer provides local netbios name resolution. I called Linsys but the conversation went nowhere. I will call again tomorrow. So all I had to do was stop using OpenDNS and go back to DNS by DCHP (to Comcast). Now everything works. I have no idea why this works this way. I think what really needs to be set up is to set fixed DNS in the router on the Internet side. Unfortunately in this router you can only do it if you also set a fixed IP address also. That is not going to work with Comcast cable.

Ran another test that showed it is not a problem with my router, it is something with openDNS. I set the fixed DNS addresses to the current comcast DNS servers. This works. So there is only a problem when they are set to OpenDNS. I double checked that typo correction is off.

I'm still curious, can this router do fixed IP assignments on the LAN?

yes.

cheers,