how can i find out a netbios name from an IP address.

[Craig Sanders]

i install quite a few (debian linux) internet gateway boxes with samba
installed so that the client can get their /var/www directory in network
neighbourhood.

in order to diagnose network faults (i.e "WTF can't the stupid doze boxes
see/login to/etc the samba share?"), i often need to find out the netbios
name of a machine.  for some reason this seems to an extraordinarily
difficult thing to find out if you don't already known it...

given that:

a) i don't have a windows machine,
b) i don't want no stinking GUI tool,
c) i'm usually not on site (logged in with ssh),

how can i find out the netbios name of a machine when i have it's IP
address?

can samba do it?  smbclient doesn't want to do anything unless i already
know the name.

are there any other tools that can do it?  nat (part of the smb-nat
package) sometimes works, but only if nmbd isn't running...wierd.  nat
also tries to do too much...all i want is the netbios name, i don't want
it to try it's lame cracking attempts. 

(at worst, i suppose i could hack the source of nat so that it just does
what i want.  nat10 is GPL code, based on samba.)

any pointers to command line tools which would be useful to a unix geek
would be very much appreciated. 

thanks,

craig


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craig sanders