Can't find Windows boxes by hostname

[Charlie Foxtrot]

Hello,

I can't find any of my Windows boxes that are connected to my wireless router by hostname, but the ip address works fine.

knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ cat /etc/resolv.conf  
# Generated by NetworkManager
domain Belkin
search Belkin
nameserver 192.168.2.1

If I visit the 192.168.2.1 website and go to the DHCP settings, I see all the hostnames and ip addresses of all the attached devices. So if my Belkin wireless router knows the ip address/hostname mapping, why can't it send me to the appropriate device when I do a ping, etc?

-Charlie

[Werner P. Schulz]

... I think, your router can only connect to nameservers outside your LAN/WLAN, but cannot work as a nameserver by itself. What does the description of the Belkin router say?

Greetings Werner * http://www.wp-schulz.de/knoppix/summary.html
Own Rescue-CD with Knoppix (Knoppix V6.4.4 remaster)

[Forester]

I agree with Werner. I would not expect a home router to offer name services.

On a small home LAN the best way of address machines by name is to use /etc/hosts. See man hosts for more information.

You prepare this file in an editor. Only root has write access to this file so use either sudo nano from a terminal or leafpad from a root console.

You can (and should) propagate this file to all machines on your home LAN. That includes Windows machines. There is actually a hosts file on Windows machines but I'm not too sure of its exact location.

It may be that your Windows machines know of each others names through a broadcast system. You can get that under Linux by running a samba server but that is more trouble that it is worth. While samba knows about Linux, Linux doesn't know about samba so you'd end up with your Windows machines knowing the name of the Knoppix machine but not vice versa.