[ale] Optimal Name Resolution Setup in Mixed Environment

[SanMillan, Todd]

There are a couple of ways to skin that cat...
1) add an NT DNS server and tell it to do WINS lookups for anything not in
the DNS.  You can make it primary for a domain called something like
wins.company.com (unfortunately WINS is a flat namespace, not hierarchical
like DNS, may or may not be a issue for y'all).  This would find all the
DHCP clients as well as the servers that the NT guys didn't add to DNS.

2) use the Win2000 DHCP server and tell it to update the DNS when it hands
out an address.  The DNS server has to allow dynamic updates.  I know the
later releases of BIND (post 8.2 IIRC) handle DDNS (dynamic DNS) as well as
the Win2000 DNS server, but I haven't had a chance to test the
interoperability.  This would only find the  DHCP clients, but you can put
the servers on DHCP and assign them reserved IP addresses, so it never
changes.

3) upgrade every single windows machine to Win2000 and have them update the
DNS themselves.  Again you need a DDNS server.  This would find all the
Win2000 machines

4) Samba has WINS support, in fact, you can run a WINS server on a Samba
machine.  You can just have all the Linux machines run Samba and register
with the WINS server and do lookups for windows machines. Take a look at
nmbd and nmblookup.  This would find all the WinX machines.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Hubbs [mailto:Jhubbs at niit.com]
To: ale at ale.org
Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2000 2:24 PM
To: Dan Newcombe
Cc: ALE
Subject: RE: [ale] Optimal Name Resolution Setup in Mixed Environment


Dan -

Thanks for your response; this was exactly what I was looking for.  

I have a question, though.  How do the non-Windows machines resolve names
for the machines that are DHCP clients?  That seems to be part of the
problem I'm having now - Linux can't even ping an ip address if it can't
resolve a name for it!

- Jeff

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Newcombe [mailto:Newcombe at mordor.clayton.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2000 2:03 PM
> To: Jeff Hubbs
> Cc: ALE
> Subject: Re: [ale] Optimal Name Resolution Setup in Mixed Environment
> 
> 
> On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> > Can anyone wax knowledgeable on what the preferred 
> arrangement is w.r.t.
> > WINS/DNS in a mixed Windows/Linux environment?
> 
> Here's what we do.  Our DNS is on Linux.  WINS is on the NT PDC.  Any
> static IP address should have a DNS entry, however, in the 
> past, our NT
> guy was very lazy or ms centric or something, so lots of the 
> NT servers
> did not end up in the DNS, because "wins will take care of it".  While
> this is true, it was also a pain from non-windows machine.
> 
> As for desktops, they get their ip's via dhcp, complete with 
> wins and dns
> servers filled in.  
> 
> > Is it possible/preferable to lead a WINS-less existence in such an
> > environment?
> 
> You could if no-one cared about peer-to-peer sharing.  But if 
> they want to
> share their harddrives to other uses, wins is almost surely 
> needed.  Then
> again, I don't think I've ever tried it without a wins 
> server, either on
> nt or linux.
> 
> Regardless of if your DNS server is on nt or linux, I don't 
> see why they
> wouldn't want to put those ips in the dns.  In fact, if they 
> are that set
> on it, why even have a DNS server (probably for external coming in).
> 
> 
> 
> 
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