I've just installed Debian Jessie on 3 systems. On the two of them that I did an upgrade install, my ATT U-Verse router shows the IPV4 name. On the one I just installed tonight, it's showing the MAC address. The result is that I can't address the third machine by xxx.attlocal.net unless I add that to my hosts files.

I've seen some suggestions that this is a netbios name issue and the suggestion was to install samba. Still no joy. Any suggestions?

What's an IPv4 name? I know about IPv4 addresses, but not names. Do you mean hostname, or DNS name?
Where does this name come from? Do you register it somewhere?
How did you register the name of the third system?
And do these systems have IPv4 addresses? If yes, do they come from the router?

Here is my guess, based on a heap of assumptions: The router doesn't see the IP address of #3, perhaps because the computer isn't configured to get its address via DHCP.

Hmm. I just checked it again, and it's finally the right value for the third system. I'm still in the dark as to why. My guess is that the U-Verse router has some time constraint on when it updates it dhcp tables.

As to what I'm talking about: My understanding is that the ipv4 device name is the machine's hostname. When the router doesn't know the hostname, it uses the MAC address prepended by "unknown". Without the ipv4 device name, you cannot address a device by its FQDN. Maybe this will explain it a bit better. It's taken from the U-Verse router's Device List page:

The device I was having problems with is 192.168.1.70, which has a hostname of wendy. Until this morning, it was displaying the MAC ID instead of "wendy". Notice for 192.168.1.77 the MAC ID is displayed, prepended by "unknown". That device is a ProLogix GPIB adapter, and has no IPV4 Device Name.

Added:

As to how it's added or where it comes from, I don't know. It could be just the hostname and it took a long time for the U-Verse router to register it, or it could be that samba was needed. I just don't know.

Just some clarity, I hope:
hostname is the name by which a server knows itself. At one time this also had to do with the FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) which I believe you called Network Name. (As good a name as any other, I guess.) The FQDN is really the name of an address or interface. They SHOULD match, if your host has only one interface. I have servers with a dozen!

While the server knows itself by a hostname, and this should match the FQDN of one interface, there may be a different FQDN for each interface that has a valid TCP IP address. DNS resolution maps (generally, or in the most common case) one name to one address.

In the case of DHCP assigned addressing, the hostname may have NOTHING to do with the FQDN. It may, but that depends upon how the DHCP server is configured, and the DNS communications involved. If the engines are separate, there may be a lag time between assigning an address and name to a mac, and the availability of resolution on the DNS tables. Some integrated system cut the lag to milliseconds.

I mostly avoid the whole mess by using DHCP only for things where the name and address so not really matter, as long as they work. (Cell phones, laptops, most general client workstations and devices) and using static addressing and naming for servers.

Does any of this help figure out why the delay in your specific case? No idea. I do not have an instance of that device to test, know little about your configuration, and would be guessing in the dark.
My hope is that the discussion helps you figure it out.

Typically, the DHCP client (dhclient) when it requests an IP address from the DHCP server sends the computer's host name as configured in the dhclient.conf file. I assume if the device sends an empty or null host name the U-Verse router will default to unknown<MAC>. Nothing to do with samba.

Hi wpeckham,
I've thought about doing this many times over the years, but I've stubbornly stuck with dhcp. This is the first time I've been bitten. OTOH, I noticed last night that it's possible to set an individual ip to static instead of dhcp, on the U-Verse router. That doesn't fix the delay, of course, but it does make the ips stable.

So, what do you do about addressing? Do you put all your hostnames in each of your machines /etc/hosts files? Granted I've only got three, so it's not a big deal. All three of these devices are servers of one type or other. Two are nfs fileservers, and the other one runs the mysql server. It's just that having the names on the U-Verse router is so much more convenient - until there's a problem, of course. =)

I run my own DHCP and caching DNS server (debian, with dnsmasq, but there are other solutions equally good) and do not force (allow) the router to do that job. That allows me to control the naming, addressing, and resolution without very much work.


But then, I do this for FUN! ;-)

Hi michaelk,
Thanks for your post. I had completely forgotten about that file. Here is the active contents of /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf
So, I guess that means that it's simply down to a delay in the U-Verse box.

Most likely...