problem with resolving MAC address from windows

system7 · 02-15-2004, 02:59 PM

I'm connected to local network where widows system is installed on majority of computers. I have configured Samba and everything's running fine (netbios is configured as well running nmbd to provide name services). The only problem that matters is that my MAC address could not be resolved from Windows XP systems. When trying to resolve this MAC address, the only thing that is shown are only zeroes - 00:00:00:00:00:00.
What needs to be configured so the windows users can resolve my MAC address???

chort · 02-15-2004, 03:05 PM

If all your connectivity is working at the application layer, why are you worried about the MAC address?

system7 · 02-15-2004, 03:18 PM

...I'm just interested why this is so and why it couldn't be resolved... I see no reason for it...

chort · 02-15-2004, 05:25 PM

Well obviously the IP -> MAC conversion is working correctly, or you wouldn't be able to connect at all. What must be missing is the hostname resolution. You either need to place it in a hosts file on Windows, or setup an internal DNS system.

PS, you do know that ARP cache entries expire, right? Unless you're doing arp -a immediately after pining the host in question (or making some type of connection to it) then it won't have an entry in the ARP cache.