[X4U] 3 network questions

[Bem Ajani Jones-Bey]

On Dec 1, 2005, at 16:19, Colt Freeman wrote:

> They are not full domains like a .com or a .edu it's an internal to my
> campus computer, one is the entire address, ie on Windows I go to  
> start run
> and type \\one to access it's files. On Mac I need to enter the ip  
> address
> in connect to server.

Windows has its own way of resolving network names that it uses in  
addition to dns. It's called WINS. WINS can work with central  
servers, like with DNS, or it can work via broadcast queries on the  
local lan. You can do these lookups on your mac from the command line  
using a tool from samba called nmblookup. By default, it attempts a  
broadcast query, so you can try 'nmblookup one' and see if you can  
get the ip address. If that doesn't work, you can run 'ipconfig' on a  
windows machine, and see if it's getting WINS servers set via DHCP.  
If it is, you can try looking these up in the WINS server with  
nmblookup. The command would be something like 'nmblookup -U  
ipaddress -R one'. Of course, you can read more about nmblookup with  
'man nmblookup'.

I do realize that the above does not solve your problem, however, it  
does allow you to look up the ip addresses so that you can connect to  
the windows services if you don't have a windows machine.

If you want to be able to look up the windows names with your apps,  
you need to somehow get Samba into the name resolution order for your  
Mac. Sadly, while I've done this in the past on Linux, I've never  
seen anything about getting it to work on Mac OS X. (Admittedly, I  
haven't done that much looking) I think you'd have to do something  
funky in NetInfo Manager, but that's about as much as I know.

>
>>> Question 3, How do I access my own computer from another one on
>>> campus,
>>
>> Again what do you mean by access? Are you asking what name should you
>> use?
>
> Access to my internal files, I have one user on my system  
> specifically to
> access its data from the rest of the campus, but for some reason I  
> can't
> access it from outside my dorm, while windows boxes can be access  
> through
> remote pc from anywhere on campus.

Have you turned on windows file sharing in the sharing preference  
pane? If so, you should be able to connect to your machine and log  
into that account from a windows machine.

>
>>> for some reason when I go into sharing in system prefs click
>>> personal file
>>> sharing it tells me that I can access my computer at afp://
>>> jamielaptop/ My
>>> computer name is Ideal, no where is jamielaptop entered in my
>>> computer. So
>>> I'm assuming that I'm getting an IP from some other students
>>> computer, What
>>> am I doing wrong? Is there a way to easily get to my computer from
>>> windows
>>> AND mac boxes from around the campus?
>>
>> So it says "Ideal" in the Computer Name field of the Sharing
>> preferences panel? What is the contents of the Network Configuration
>> section of /etc/hostconfig? What does "hostname" typed in a terminal
>> say?
>
> Hostname is now crvp, which is another computer that I resolve to  
> sometimes,
> I did a reboot for another reason and when I came back I no longer am
> hostnamed jamielaptop I'm now crvp.

By default, the hostname on Mac OS X gets set by the dhcp server (or  
if not that, it grabs it from the reverse DNS for your ip address). I  
found this rather annoying, as it breaks some unix apps that don't  
expect your hostname to spontaneously change. If you want to fix  
this, you can edit /etc/hostconfig, and change the line that says  
HOSTNAME=-AUTOMATIC- to HOSTNAME=Ideal (or whatever you want your  
hostname to be). It says that the file is maintained by the system  
control panels, but I've never had it change it back to -AUTOMATIC-.

Hope this helps.