Hi,

I recently bought a switch/router, and now have the machines sharing a broadband connection. Previously i had Apache, NFS and Samba working between two machines with a cross-over ethernet cable.
Now i can only access the Apache server with the IP address as the base of the URL. NFS and Samba clients can't seem to find hosts.

When looking on the router's DHCP Client Log the machines are listed with their hostnames and assigned IP addresses, eg:

The ping command works using the IP address of a machine but not it's hostname, eg:

I can access an Apache server on a Linux machine by entering the IP, but not the hostname. Having setup internet and file sharing between win XP/98 machines i'm assuming that the switch works OK and the win machines are OK from a file sharing (Samba) point of view.
smb.conf:
Neither samba or NFS work. When configuring an NFS client there are no NFS servers listed to chose from (yes, all are up and running).

I've tried this with the various firewalls turned off; SuseFirewall and the router's hardware one.

I'm new to networking and now completely stumped, as i'm not a SA type i don't know what logs to post here.
Think this some sort of hostname resolution problem, can anyone help, please?

Distro: suse 9.1
Router: SMC7004ABR

well I aint no expert on this, but it seems to me like your machines don't know where to look up the names. Are you connecting to the internet ok? Is the DNS look-up working there? Presumably, since you posted. Since the DHCP server is the only server that knows the names of the other servers on your net, then presumably you should add the DHCP server (your router) as the first DNS entry. That's just what my logic tells me and I might be completely wrong. Good luck.

Hi Treehugger,

Yeap the internet is accessible from all machines.

When looking at the router's DHCP client log it lists the IP addresses together with the hostnames (vaio and badlands).

You reckon i should set my router as the DNS server? That sounds about right, i'll have a play with that tonight, and post the result.

Thanks Treehugger

Hi,

There was a DDNS (Dynamic DNS for Internet domains) setting that confused me a bit there. I was @ work when i sent that last mail - so i wasn't looking at the router config

But the router is set as the first (and only) name server for all machines, it seems to recognise these but doesn't broadcast them to other machines. Still no joy

The situation is this:

1. Internet works on all machines
2. Router's web config page lists dhcp assigned IPs with the machine's correct hostnames
2. ping works using IP of remote LAN or local machine (also resolves www.google.com etc)
3. ping reports unknown host when using LAN hostname, and uses loopback when local hostname
4. win networking OK, so i'm assuming it's not hardware/router issue.


Is there a that can point a networking know-nothing in the right direction

Ta

dunno.

there must be a reason why the DDNS isn't working. I never set up a DNS and can't help you.

I just had a quick look in my O'Reilly 'Essential UNIX system admin' and couldn't really make head or tail of it.

If no jumps in now, I'd google on DDNS and DHCP.

Have you tried adding the systems to your /etc/hosts file? The when you look at the DHCP connections, it is showing the hostnames correctly, but I believe it does not do a DNS entry for them.