I have a scanner for my windows clients and it tells me the ip addresses that are available and then it shows using NetBios that the hostnmame is johndoe-hplaptop or whatever.
On my Macs I have a scanner and it shows me IP addresses that are alive and then Appletalk shows me that the machine is named julies-macbook.
On Linux machines I can scan for IP addresses, but my windows scanner tool doesn't show me the hostnames of those linux machines. Is there a way to view linux hostnames from a scanner of some sort without connecting to the box with SSH?
Thanks!

1. implement dDNS on the network.

2. Modify the hosts files on all your machines

3. enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP in Samba on all your Linux boxes. also look at nmbd may be a bit lighter..
(I've never used option 3 I always go for option 1.. so I'm no expert on this one.. )


Option 1 is the best resolution, since both windows and Linux can query dns

Option 2, is OK but gets unweildy fast because you have to manually maintain all those hosts files. This is Why DNS was invented

Option 3 well if you really want to install and configure Samba on every Linux box in your network..

I will look into this option. Thanks for the help!

Can you point me in the right direction for deploying dDNS internally? I did some searches but all the results were how to setup your home machine to register with a dynamic DNS service.
I looked for a Linux server to run dDNS and work with or replace my existing DHCP, but I haven't found anything. Thanks again!

You using a router? Check out your router settings.

My router is a Cisco 3845. I want to deploy this in an enterprise environment. I want to run my own server to maintain the database of clients and their hostnames internally. I don't want all of my internal clients registering with an external service. Perhaps dDNS is not the correct solution? Thanks.

Not sure what flavor of Linux you are running.. here is one how-to

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/343

if you are already running a windows AD Domain you can get your Linux boxes ot register with the Windows DNS I believe or if all your boxes are statically addressed then it's just a matter of adding host records for them in DNS.

Thank you, this is what I was searching for I just wasn't finding it.