[X4U] 3 network questions

[Colt Freeman]

Wow, what an amazing reply, thanks for all the time, effort and expert
advice, I'll see what I can do now that I'm enlightened...
-Colt


On 12/1/05 11:15 PM, "Bem Ajani Jones-Bey" <ajani at pyen.com> wrote:

> 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.
>