Name Resolution Problems

[Peter Samuelson]

[Ed Presutti <Ed.Presutti at usunwired.com>]
> Is there any way to make BIND use WINS with Samba?

Yes.

> I'm running 2 Linux boxes with BIND 8.2.2P5 and our organization is
> wanting WINS lookup, they're complaining about the fact that
> workstations don't appear in DNS.

There are two good solutions I know of.  The first is the smb.conf
parameter `wins hook' which specifies a program to run every time
someone registers a name with your WINS server.  Do something with BIND
dynamic updates.

The second is via your DHCP server (if you use one), and this is what
we use.  There's a Perl program that parses the dhcpd.leases file (the
file about current outstanding DHCP leases, y'know), generates an
update script and feeds this into the `nsupdate' program, which feeds
it into BIND.  You have to set up BIND for dynamic updates, and run the
script I mentioned every five minutes or so from cron, and run a second
program every few hours or so to commit the dynamic records to disk
(this bit is probably optional).

Disclaimer: a lot of this gets set up automatically when you install
the Debian Linux package `dhcp-dns'.  What I've described is how
dhcp-dns sets things up; I don't know if it's optimal.

Solution #2 works great for us, reverse lookups and everything.  And it
was actually pretty easy to set up once I finally remembered to edit my
named.conf file to allow dynamic updates from 127.0.0.1 for the forward
and reverse domains in question....

Either way, note that you almost certainly want to put your dynamic
names in a dedicated subdomain, for security and sanity reasons.
Otherwise it's just *way* too easy to pollute your static entries....

So if you use Debian Linux (and why wouldn't you? <g>) try out dhcp-dns:

  apt-get install dhcp-dns

If you don't, get the original tarball at:

  http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/source/net/dhcp-dns_0.50.orig.tar.gz
  http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/source/net/dhcp-dns_0.50-3.diff.gz

(The second URL is the Debian modifications -- probably including the
setup with cron etc. -- so it might be useful.)

> I'm wondering if there is a way to make BIND use WINS as a secondary
> lookup source like Wintendo DNS does.

Dunno.  As Matt said, you don't really need BIND to do this if you can
convince your libc functions to do it instead -- that's what the NSS
library stuff is all about.

Peter