Samba 2.0.7, cannot find netbios names

[Peter Samuelson]

[Ben Meyer <Ben_Meyer at pfm.org>]
> When I try to Ping a server using it's netbios name it reports the
> following:
> ping: unknown host 'Tux' (or other netbios name)
> When I ping it using the IP address, it works fine.

`ping' on Unix (is this on Unix?) uses the C library function
gethostbyname() for name resolution.  On some versions of Unix (such as
Solaris, Linux, and HP-UX) gethostbyname() goes through a switch known
as NSS; other versions have hard-coded methods.  The typical Unix setup
uses static /etc/hosts entries, the NIS map `hosts.byname', and DNS as
configured in /etc/resolv.conf.

Currently Samba has no effect on any of these things, so `ping' cannot
perform NetBIOS name lookups.  There is an effort in progress, winbind,
which will provide among other things an NSS module for NetBIOS, but
winbind is not yet distributed with Samba releases.

> I can ping using the netbios name on my 2.0.6 Samba server (on
> another system).

In that case you most likely have other differences in your two
environments.

Peter