Hello, my problem is that I am on a win NT network, I need to have my linux box log on to the winNT DHCP server and return with a name so I can ping it by name, without messing with the hosts file. I know that NT can get hostname assigned with their ip very easily (with out haveing to contact sys admin) I REALLY need to get this to work, my work has been considering using it insted of NT but it NEEDs this functionality. I have installed the update to pump but this still dosn't work, I have installed linux on 8 boxes and it still will not work. Please Help, Kevin Gerth
Kevin, Your question begs the question how does a Windows NT/98/95 computer find other computers on the network? As you basically know DNS provides the ability of a central server to map host names to IP Addresses. What you have not realized is that this is not the only method that NT/98/95 uses to locate other computers. The alternate for these computers is to use WINS to find the target computer. When NT/98/95 does not get a valid response to the computer name it is requesting from DNS, it then tries WINS and then a lookup in the LMHOSTS files (Windows NT - C:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\lmhosts). If you want your computer to be automatically found when it comes up, then turn on and install samba (which is somewhat of an exercise in itself). This will enable the nmbd daemon which will broadcast the IP address of the computer to the network to the current WINS master. Unfortunately pump does not modify the hosts table to indicate the local host name IP address. So this solution is does not work too well. How about this as a defect? That the pump daemon does not update the hosts table to indicate the host IP address?