Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Norfolk, VA
Posts: 4762

This weekend I go samba running on my home network. My old beige box (running CENTOS 4.3) is now a fileserver.

The other boxes on the network can see the network share and so forth, but you have to use the IP. So, the box's hostname is "rockstar" and the IP is 192.168.1.101--a user has to browse to \\192.168.1.101, \\rockstar doesn't work.

Is this because I have no DNS server running? If so it's as good a time as any to learn how to set one up.

So, if anyone knows of any good introductory pages on this stuff, please let me know. I'm kind of starting from scratch here, as I don't know anything about what a domain is exactly other than that DNS maps hostnames to IP addresses.

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Registered: Feb 2004
Location: alaska
Posts: 17509

you could always add this to your hosts file

quote:

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192.168.1.101 rockstar

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Norfolk, VA
Posts: 4762

Ok, I'll give it a go.

Is there any reason then to run your own name server? Any advantage?

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Registered: Nov 2000
Location: UK
Posts: 4833

Using the hostname should work without fudging around with hosts file. Make sure the Windows and Samba box are in the same workgroup and explicitly set:

local master = yes
dns proxy = yes

In the smb.conf. Also make sure that the hosts file on the fileserver has a entry for itself(both for it's FQDN and non-qualified), with the right IP address. The reason for this is that the "dns proxy" part of Samba will do a host lookup to try and resolve any NetBIOS lookup requests.

As for DNS, the main reason for using it over a local hosts file is it becomes easier to manage in a large network.

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