hye guys..thanks for all those patient profesionals in linux ..helping the newbies like me.....

i am trying to install a local dns server......on my windows workgroup....
with the aim to install an internal mail server....

i have a pentium 4 with win xp pro ...i have installed vmware and installed
red hat 9 on it....

i have edited my named.conf....

and created the forward zone file and reverse zone file.....

when i start named ...it seems to be running fine.....


but from vm ware when i go to my windows machine...it cannot ping my vmaware installation by name ...but it can ping it by ip address....

can anyone explain me why this is happening ....and how to solve this please.

This is probably pretty obvious but did you point the DNS server on XP to your VMware Redhat? Also if you wish to access it by hostname only you need to either setup proper DNS suffix in winxp, or run nmbd(Samba) on Redhat.

thanks demonbabe for the prompt reply...
in the mean time.... i had another surprise......well may be my dns isn't working at all ..because i did a dig command , i got only the "question" section and no "answer "section.....
i must do it all agin i guess..or is them some ways to fix it...or are there downloadle templates for dns.....????