On Thu, 2007-10-18 at 11:35 -0700, J. Alex Aycinena wrote: > The router is a Linksys NR041. When looking at its DHCP Client Table, > all the machines, Windows and Fedora, have their proper names shown, > so the Fedora machines seem to be forwarding their names to the router > properly when they get their IP addresses. I can't see anything in the > documentation that came with the router, nor the website, to indicate > whether or not it can function as a DNS. I'm not familiar with it, but many do not. That table just gives *you* information about what's going on, DHCP-wise. It's simple enough to test, though. Use the dig tool. Ask the Linksys to resolve a machine name for you. Syntax: dig requestaddress @resolveraddress (The lack of the space after the @ sign is deliberate.) e.g. dig mybox @192.168.1.254 And the "ANSWER SECTION" should give you an IP for that request. (That's presuming that your router was at 192.168.1.254, it may not be.) Also try the reverse lookup, if that works. Take the IP belonging to mybox (let's say it's 192.168.1.1), and ask the resolver to tell you the hostname for it. e.g. dig -x 192.168.1.1 @192.168.1.254 And the "ANSWER SECTION" should give you a hostname for that request. > Because the router is the only device that is reliably turned on on > the network when any particular computer is turned on, I would prefer > to have it play the DHCP and DNS role rather than any of the > computers. Also because of laptops and occassional guest computers on > the LAN, I don't want to use fixed IP addresses (1 Vista desktop, 1 > Vista laptop, occasionally a couple of other Windows machines, 1 to 3 > Fedora desktops - typically from 0 to 4 machines turned on at any > time). You *can* still use fixed addresses for your own machines. Just pick ones out of the range the DHCP will dole out. > Do you know how to indicate to the Fedora boxes that the router is the > DNS? Perhaps I don't have that configured right; I could just try that > and see if it works. You'll probably find that the router has a DHCP server that tells all the clients which DNS server to use, either itself, or it'll pass on the IP addresses that the ISP gave as their own DNS servers. You should be able to configure your router to declare the DNS servers that you want to use. NB: Just because the router can act as a DNS server for your LAN, doesn't mean that it'll resolve local names. It may just act as a relay proxy for your ISP's DNS servers. > If after trying that it doesn't work (that is the router fails to work > as a DNS) then is it possible to have the router continue functioning > as the DHCP and set up the F7 box as a local DNS for the LAN (although > I'm not sure how it could get its information to do that)? Yes, but I think you wouldn't have enough configuration options in your router to make its DHCP server update your local DNS server, they'd be independent. If you're going to have a local machine act as a DNS server, then you may as well get it to be the DHCP server, too. In that case, you'd turn off the DHCP server in your router, and let your machine answer all queries. > I guess a third option is to try and get the Fedora boxes to get the > name resolution however the Vista machine is doing it (you guessed > perhaps using Windows networking). Can this be done using Samba and > then somehow making the information available to the native Linux > mechanisms so that you could successfully ping the Vista machine from > the Fedora machine using its name? If you have a working DNS server, then all the machines will use that. I think Windows will even use it in preference to SMB for resolving names when it does Windows filesharing. It'll certainly use DNS in preference to SMB for other name resolution reasons. I have a local DHCP and DNS server running on Fedora, and all machines use it for name resolution, Windows 95 through to Vista, included. -- [tim@bigblack ~]$ uname -ipr 2.6.22.9-91.fc7 i686 i386 Using FC 4, 5, 6 & 7, plus CentOS 5. Today, it's FC7. Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
