[linux-cifs-client] Re: Re: Identify a host

[John G Walker]

On Mon, 14 May 2007 17:51:17 -0700 Akemi Yagi <amyagi at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 14 May 2007 16:57:36 -0400, simo wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 2007-05-14 at 21:21 +0100, John G Walker wrote:
> > 
> >> Now this is what I'm looking for. I ping Fred (where Fred is the
> >> name of a server) and ping can't find it.
> > 
> > This I guess, means Fred is not a DNS name but a NetBIOS name. You
> > may try and experiment with libnss_wins in nsswitch.conf
> > 
> > Simo.
> 
> Steve French gave you a thorough explanation for you.  To understand
> what your problem is, you need to learn more about the network,
> particularly the way a machine is identified on a network; things
> like DNS, NetBIOS name, how they are resolved, etc, etc.
> 

Steve;s reply was indeed thorough. Unfortunately, it only touched
slightly on my problem.

But you're right that I need to know more about how a machine is
identified on a network. My confusion isn't helped by the fact that
YaSt refers indiscriminately to "host". Following up the references
that Simo and you gave suggests that, by this, they mean "NetBIOS
name". But that wasn't clear before I was given a couple of pointers.

> As Simo suggested, Fred is not in DNS, which is why mount -t cifs
> cannot find it.  In this case, you need to resort to the windows name
> resolution. Edit /etc/nsswitch.conf and locate the line that starts
> with hosts.  Then add wins on that line.  If you are lucky, this is
> all you need to do.
> 
> This wiki page may be a good starting point for you:
> 
> http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Mounting_samba_shares_from_a_unix_client
> 

This is precisely the sort of thing I was asking for in my original
post. Thanks. I think I'm clear now. The wiki is particularly good.

Apologies for the delay in replying, but I haven't had time until this
evening to check out the information in the post.

However, I haven't got as far as I'd hoped, since i don't seem to be
able to find out where to get libnss_wins.so. I've found umpteen
references to it but nothing about how to find it,

-- 
 All the best,
 John