I've touched on this questions in the past, but it is only really now that it will play a big part in my setup.

I have a windows/Linux LAN, which talk to each other and also connect to the net via an ADSL router, to which I have a static IP address. I now wish to tie a domain name to that IP address. Actually I have a few tied to it, but this will be one that I am actually going to use.

However, my windows WORKGROUP name currently matches that of my two Linux boxes.

I have tried changing the domains name on one of my linux boxes to match that if the external domains which now points to my IP address, but in doing this i can not connect to this box from my Windows mahcine, something which I normally do through samba.

I'd like to add that all machines share the same range of IP addresses.

Would I now have to change my windows WORKGROUP name to match that of the external domain?

As always any help is appreciated...

Thanks

i take it from your question you are trying to get your linux box to act as a webserver to serve a www page while still serving windows boxes with samba?

if so i have this setup at my house, and it really is not a problem ( except i dont have a .com/.net/.org or what ever tied to it, because it would be in violation of my isp's service agreement )

if not could you please clarify your question so we can get a better idea of what you are asking

It's seems to me that you are confused with Windows domains and DNS domains. Windows domains and workgroups are just secruity boundaries, they have nothing to do w/ IP to hostname resolution as with DNS. How you setup the Workgroup name is completely irrevalent.

I do currently run a www.whatever.com website from this box, and also connect through it from a windows mahcine.

Some of the problems I get currently are then when sending mail from the box, they show the WORKGROUP name instead of the domain name., and when I change the linux box's name to the external domain name, I can no longer connect through windows samba connection.

Hope this helps clarify...

i presume that you are sending mail from the linux box out to the world

if this is the case what mail client are you using?

I'm using sendmail

it sounds like your sendmail is missconfigured then,

if you edit your sendmail config and edit your domain line to be the one you want.

most people recommend using the m4 configuration editing tool
basicaly because the sendmail configuration file can look a bit daunting to some and m4 is there to help
the m4 macro is DOMAIN('domain.name.com')

have a look inside your sendmail configuration file by all means, but becareful if you feel the need to chage anything

when you have edited the config file you will need to restart the sendmail deamon

if you are going to use sendmail i would recommend reading around on the web of do like i did and buy a book ( but make sure you use the book )
my book is the third edition sendmail from o'reilly ( costales and allman )

i took one look at it and did not realise how complicated it was!

So to recap...

You would advise that I DO NOT change the domain name of my Linux box and as such keep it on the same Windows WORKGROUP, thus retaining windows connectivity through samba, but instead change the domain name used in Sendmail to that of the External domain name...

in short, you do not have to change the boxes domain name

basically sendmail is can scale from one domain to thousands, in a proper setup ( by proper setup i mean huge datacentre etc ) your linux box would be setup to conform to your company's naming policy. so it would be setup something like servera.company.com, serverb.company.com and so on.
if sendmail is configured properly you can do alsorts with it

as yet i have only had to set the domain and host name properly on one of my linux boxes, i have been playing around on a test linux box today and i have changed my domain name and samba still works and apache still works and anything else i could think of
at the time worked ( i did not try sendmail as i was not fully awake at the time )


the only thing i can think of it that you dont have a line in your smb.conf file that says workgroup={wrkgrp}
( where {wrkgrp} = your workgroup name or domain name or what ever you want to call it )