August 12th, 2008 - 05:42 pm ET by Jesse Dorland
"Few months ago I post a wifi connection problem. For some reason I was unable to log into Toronto Public Library Wifi's network. Mr. Helge
provided an excellent solution to my problem. You see TPL is running
their sever on nt, and I needed Winbind package for that. Now I am
able surf internet on my lovely Linux distro
I reposting the solution here incase someone is also having the same
problem.
If spyders.local is a local network address, it might be a problem (or
lack) of proper name lookup.
Try enabling WINS name lookup as additional to standard DNS.
In Ubuntu/Debian you would do this by installing the winbind packages,
together with samba I think.
Once winbind is up and running, add "wins" to the end of the "hosts:"
line in /etc/nsswitch.conf
Like this:
***** /etc/nsswitch.conf ******
hosts files dns wins
*******************************
You might need to restart your network or reboot, but IIRC it usually
works right away.
-
Thank you Helge"
http://us.generation-nt.com/toronto-...171139901.html
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I followed Jesse's relayed instructions but ran into a snag under Ubuntu 10.04 which refused to connect to the T.P.L.'s home page:
Here is the way /etc/nsswitch.conf originally looked on my PC...
# /etc/nsswitch.conf
#
# Example configuration of GNU Name Service Switch functionality.
# If you have the `glibc-doc-reference' and `info' packages installed, try:
# `info libc "Name Service Switch"' for information about this file.
passwd: compat
group: compat
shadow: compat
hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
networks: files
protocols: db files
services: db files
ethers: db files
rpc: db files
netgroup: nis
...and here's the way it looked when I finally got it to work:
# /etc/nsswitch.conf
#
# Example configuration of GNU Name Service Switch functionality.
# If you have the `glibc-doc-reference' and `info' packages installed, try:
# `info libc "Name Service Switch"' for information about this file.
passwd: compat
group: compat
shadow: compat
hosts: files dns wins
networks: files
protocols: db files
services: db files
ethers: db files
rpc: db files
netgroup: nis
BTW. I first ran
shares-admin in Terminal (to install Sharing services for Windows, and Unix machines <-- why not?
) and then edited /etc/nsswitch.conf by using this command in Terminal...
gksudo gedit /etc/nsswitch.conf
...and then rebooted.
I also found that I had to temporarily *disable the NoScript add-on I'd installed in Firefox until after I had succeeded in reaching Google via Spyders-->T.P.L.'s home page.
*I expect there's a way to add Spyders to NoScript's 'white list' but I haven't figured out how to do that yet.
Oh yeah. Don't forget to make a backup copy of the nsswitch.conf file (by dragging it out onto the desktop) before editing it.
--------
I hope this post will spare other Ubuntu/Ubuntu Studio 10.04 newbies the Toronto Public Library log on headaches I went through for I expect that the T.P.L. isn't the only public library system using a Windows NT server and an IT security company similar to
Spyders.
