Can't ping machines on local network

[ForteSystems]

I have a cable modem and a router/4-port switch. My ISP requires that I set up the network via DHCP; the router/switch acts as a DHCP server. I have a SuSE 9.2 machine and 2 Windows machines (XP and 2000) connected to the switch. From my Windows boxes I can ping all machines by hostname, but from my Linux box I can only ping the Windows boxes by IP address -- not by hostname.

SuSE is acting as a Samba server/WINS server. Samba knows all of the NETBIOS hostnames (wbinfo, nmblookup), but the ping (and arp) commands just report unknown host when pinging a Windows HOSTNAME. If Linux pings itself by hostname, it works but reports the address as 127.0.0.2.

Since I'm using DHCP, I can't really use the hosts file to set static addresses. Can anyone tell me how to get Samba or DHCP to share its knowledge with arp? Thanks.

[LinuxFreak]

Dear ForteSystems,
Hello,

Try to add Local Ip address in your linux box

# ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.3

Best Regards.

[starfish]

What is the DHCP range the router is providing to your home network?

I think you can get around the problem by assigning your Samba server a permanent IP address outside this range like LinuxFreak says. Servers should always have fixed IP, not DHCP, addresses.

Once you have done that, then you can edit the hosts file without worrying about it getting overwritten.