NetBios name resolution not working
 

I am trying to set up Fedora 11 on a rebuilt machine, and add it to my LAN which has a bunch of Windows machines, and one older PC running Fedora 6. My issue is that I cannot get NetBios name resolution to work either (a) by the new machine or (b) of the new machine's name by existing machines (all of which otherwise do NetBios name resolution already).

Specifics

a) The new machine is named "franky".
b) I can ping franky by other machines by using franky's numeric IP. I cannot ping franky by its NetBios name.
c) using franky, I can ping other PCs by their numeric IPs, but not by their NetBios names
d) franky is running Samba, and - if I set up LMHOSTS of the other machines with the name/IP of franky, then the file sharing elements of samba work
e) the relevant lines of smb.conf are as follows:

Workgroup = 21Prince
Netbios name = Franky
WINS Support = Yes
DNS Proxy = No

f) These are the settinga work on other LINUX box - obviously the Netbios name is different.
g) my LAN does not have a domain controller, nor any WINS servers
h) SeLinux is set to "not enforcing"
i) I have confirmed that nmbd is running on 'franky'
j) I have confirmed that etc/services has the proper entries for protocols 137,138 and 139
k) I did MKDIR /var/run/samba (some post suggested this could be relevant)
l) firewall settings are edited to trust samba
m) networking is enabled and Firefox (and yum, for that matter) can get to the Internet and resolve Internet names, so I know the router which connects by LAN to my ISP (Comcast) is giving franky a good IPv4 address
n) on franky, I can ping localhost, 127.0.0.1, but not franky itself
o) the router log shows a blank area where I would expect the NETBIOS name for the unit
p) running system-config-networking shows that Network Manager has managed to fill in the "nameserver" value with 'hsd1.ma.comcast.net' - if Linux is using this for Netbios resolution, no wonder nothing works -
by the way, this value must be coming from the DNS servers from my ISP (Comcast); it is not available in the router, a web search indicates that ' "hsd1.ma.comcast.net" is a domain controlled by three nameservers at comcast.net. All of them are on different IP networks.' hsd1.ma.comcast.net cannot be resolved by DNS, Comcast must not have this name in their DNS servers
q) the "hsd1.ma.comcast.net" behavior is occurs whenever the connection is enable/reenabled, and occurs regardless of the Automatic or "Automatic (addresses only)" option is selected. I tried to do a manual IP setting to bypass DHCP usage, but I cannot get the user-interface to enable the "Apply" button - any hints here would be appreciated.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks
Jonathan

Played around this this a bit more, and remembered some old problems
that I had (and never solved) with NETBIOS on my LAN (some of which were
devilishly intermittent).

I turns out some machines on the LAN can ping "franky". I still cannot ping from franky to anywhere else, but I do not think I will ever need to.

Jonathan

You do have a WINS server. It's "franky". The "WINS Support = Yes" entry in smb.conf on "franky" enables WINS support. If you use a DHCP router, you could enter franky's IP address for the WINS server field in the router's configuration. That will supply the WINS IP number to your windows computers. Doing this could reduce the amount of traffic on the network by reducing the amount of network wide broadcasting by each of the hosts.
http://oreilly.com/catalog/samba/cha...k/ch07_03.html

Sometimes, the TCP ports are opened for SMB but the UDP ports are not.

AFAIK, Windows netbios names are not the same as network hostnames. In my experience, the differences make name resolution of windows hosts (from a Linux host) difficult in the console. With only 4 computers you may make life easier using the /etc/hosts file. I configured my NAT router to always assign the same IP addresses to the same hosts (the same MAC addresses actually). That way, I can use static IPs but still configure the hosts to use DHCP.

Another option is running Avanti. It might be running already. Look at "ps -e | grep ava"
If it is running, try pinging a host, but add `.local' to the hostname. There doesn't need to be a entry in /etc/hosts.
The disadvantage, in my experience is that it is slower. It is very handy if you just added a host to your network. You can enter `ping hostname.local' and if you want add the hostname to /etc/hosts.

Thanks
 

Some interesting suggestions. Especially training the router to use a fixed set of IP addresses/MAC addresses. Would allow be to have a single LMHOSTS file replicated to each machine, use DHCP, and bypass the NETBIOS nightmare completely.

JonathanWexler,

What is your router? -- commercial or "home grown".

I have been using SmoothWall Express for 5 years. Although the Wikipedia® article I cited doesn't mention it, SmoothWall uses dnsmasq. From that article: So dnsmasq on your router/gateway/firewall could be an answer to your problem.


jschiwal,

Is "Avanti" a typo?

Dlink DI-524
 

ArchToad6 -

I have a Dlink DI-524 (actually, 2 - one of which I use as an access point). I am seeing some speed issues on my DI-524s so I may need to replace them.

My guess is that "avanti" in that post should have been "avahi"

Jonathan

Not familiar w/ those, could you provide a link?

http://support.dlink.com/emulators/di524/h_wizard.html

http://www.starting25g.com/downloads...l_06292005.pdf

Here's a dumb question you may know the answer to. It seems to me that a system on the LAN requesing resolution of another name on the LAN (let's use "familyroom" as an example") first tries to get "familyroom" resolved via DNS, which the DI-524s apparently does not try to do (even though if leased an IP address to a system which identified itself as "familyroom"); it is unclear to me whether the DI-524 tries to get this resolved at the DNS servers that COMCAST provides (it probably shouldn't). With the DNS request failing, the requesting system then tries for WINS resolution, which seems to work only some of the time (at least in my LAN).

Is this an accurate description? Any thoughts on simple ways to modify these behaviors?

Jonathan