Access Windows machines from Ubuntu on local network by hostname
Solution 1
All you have to do is:
sudo gedit /etc/nsswitch.conf
change the line that says
hosts: files dns
to this:
hosts: files wins dns
(order does matter)
finally, you need to install winbind
sudo apt-get install winbind
Source: http://that-matt.com/2009/12/how-to-get-ubuntu-to-ping-a-windows-hostname/
Solution 2
The Windows machines are probably using WINS to resolve one another's names. In that case you will have to configure your Ubuntu machine to talk WINS too.
sudo apt-get install winbind
sudo gedit /etc/nsswitch.conf
Add wins
to the hosts:
line.
hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4 wins
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Admin
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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Admin over 1 year
[I've searched a LOT for a solution to this issue, but if someone wants to point me to a related question and/or answer, please do!]
I have a local network over a broadband router with 3 Windows 7 computers and an Ubuntu VirtualBox VM on a Windows host. I can access the Windows computers from one another just fine, and I've configured Samba on Ubuntu so I can see and access the my-ubuntu computer from the Windows machines as well.
The problem is accessing Windows machines from Ubuntu by hostname. I can ping the Windows machines from Ubuntu by IP address, but I can't do a lookup by their names, win7-1, win7-2, win7-3.
I.e.,
smbclient -L 192.168.2.5
is successful, butsmbclient -L win7-1
is not.smbtree
sometimes shows the following, sometimes doesn't:WORKGROUP \\MY-UBUNTU \\WIN7-1 \\WIN7-2 \\WIN7-3
- For the sake of debugging I've disabled all firewalls and enabled all read/write permissions everywhere (since they're all just my machines).
- I also know I can add entries to
/etc/hosts
for each individual machine, but I would like to learn how to get hostname lookup working dynamically
Question
How can I set up what I want to work? Ubuntu is running in a VirtualBox VM on a Windows host with Bridged networking set up, so I can't run a DNS server within Ubuntu (or can I?).
I think other newbies would also really appreciate a high-level overview, of where the DNS server should be, how the Ubuntu machine should use it, whether I need to change anything in the Windows machines' settings..I'm confused by all these packages and settings I've come across -
resolv
,libnss-mdns
,avahi
,dnsmasq
,winbind
..I just want to install and use what I need!-
Admin about 11 yearsAsk one question at a time, please.
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Daniel over 9 yearsBeing a total newbie to Ubuntu, what are the downsides of installing this package and it's dependencies? Will it kick of any additional resource intensive services etc that steels bandwidth etc?