[TriLUG] Linux DNS Server issues with DOS client - FIXED

[Roy Vestal]

First, thanks to all that helped, esp. Aaron, Kevin, and Ryan.

The error was in fact NOT on the DNS server. It is setup correctly. 
However, I had to add Samba as a DNS Proxy (Thanks Kevin!), turn off 
spanning tree (Thanks Aaron!) and I found some errors in the 
protocol.ini and the system.ini files. We moved the operation from one 
domain to another, and this was not corrected in the system.ini files. 
Also, the drivers in the protocol.ini's were not correct either.  This 
coupled with the errors above caused some major head aches. But with 
TriLUG's help and a little bit of determination, we were able to get 
this up and running.

What's really cool is it runs better than the old domain that was a 
NON-Linux DHCP/DNS server.  :)

All in all, a good time was had by all!

Thanks again guys!

Aaron Joyner wrote:

> Roy Vestal wrote:
>
>> Thanks Aaron, the spanning tree was the issue.
>>
>> Now a follow up question: So on this same dos setup I have multiple 
>> Windows servers with 2 nics, the first nic is on the REAL network, 
>> the second on this private in question. If I try to do a net use g: 
>> \\servername\share, it says "the computer name specified is not found 
>> in the network path cannot be located". My boot process mounts one 
>> server as a drive but manually it doesn't. I've looked through the 
>> autoexec.bat on this and I don't see anything that would cause this. 
>> I've even put "hosts" and "lmhosts" in a dir that's on the path to no 
>> avail.
>>
>> Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot this part?
>
>
> As Ryan basically pointed out, this isn't really a DNS issue it's a 
> Netbios issue.  DOS machines don't use DNS for name resolution, they 
> use Netbios (Lanman) name mappings on the local network.  
> Unfortunately, I have very little experience with Netbios in DOS, and 
> have little desire to acquire any more experience in said field of 
> "expertise".  Having said that, the basics are that it's a broadcast 
> protocol that attempts to locate other hosts by name.  If you're not 
> on the same broadcast domain, you need a hard mapping (like the 
> lmhosts).  If you're with in the same broadcast domain, it should 
> "just work".  I'd go with Ryan's suggestion, or perhaps further 
> experimentation / googling on the lmhosts file.
>
> Best of luck!
> Aaron S. Joyner