node reporting itself as 'localhost'

I've posted this to the RedHat list as well, not sure where the problem lies.

My office network includes a computer running red hat linux 9. It used to display on my xp workstation as penguin but since a power outage/reboot it now displays as localhost. This is also the case on a win me workstation on my network. Otherwise the connection works fine.

It's pingable from the windows boxes as penguin, fwiw.

Marty

 

display on my xp workstation as penguin

Display in Network Neighborhood (or whatever they call it this week) or somewhere else?

 

Hey Newt, it displayed in my network neighborhood as localhost. I fixed it by specifying the name of the computer on a config file on the linux box.

But what concerns me is that it always had displayed as penguin, the box' name. So why did it change now?

The intranet ip address for that, and the other boxes are all related to their names on my windows (gateway machine) using the \WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file, which hasn't been edited for some time.

So I was able to access the box by name through a ping from a windows box, and browse to websites running on its apache server (including http://penguin). The only symptom afaik was the localhost name showing up on network neighborhood.

I mean it's really no big deal, but my inquiring mind would still like to know. Y'know?

Marty

 

marty - since 'localhost' is very much a reserved name, at least in a windows environment, it is puzzling and I think I'll do some digging around. No idea how it happened but I'd like to find out too.

Are you using Samba on the linux system to let it work with the windows boxes or just pure linux?

 

<rant>This appears to me to be another example of what a pain in the behind network neighbourhood can be. It often seems to have a mind of its own. One of my nightmares is users who shout that "the network is down" when what they mean is they can't see what they are trying to access in network neighbourhood. (which just beats to the post people who complain about network performance because they find the drives aren't mapped the way they want them to be). The situation is made worse in XP because getting to the "entire" network is less than obvious. Often items (computers or printers) are there, but because the user doesn't see them at the first level, they assume a network fault. If "entire network" was an icon on initial start up, rather than an item in the second menu list (in a panel which is only viewable if you have the annoying panel setting switched on), users would drill into it more often rather than crying "the network isn't working" at the first hurdle</rant>

My personal recommendation when working with network neighbourhood is to create your own shortcuts at the highest level, rather than letting the system work it out for itself. Access the computer you want using \\<computername\ in the address bar, and then drag a shortcut to the top level of network neighbourhood for the share you wish to access regularly.

 

I'd suggest you look at your DNS settings. If you have a 2000/2003 server with DNS tied to DHCP, the localhost may have come over to the network when the Linux box started up after the power outage and asked DHCP for a new address. I think XP/2000/2003 look for DNS names before NetBIOS names. That would mean the system would check for a name in DNS before it looked at you LMHOSTS file.

 

Newt, fwiw the /etc/sysconfig/network file on my linux box said

NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME=localhost.localdomain

which I changed to

NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME=penguin

and that changed the box' displayed name on network neighborhood.

Yes, I'm running samba servers on both the linux and freebsd boxes on my intranet.

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Reggie, after first mapping each drive partition and samba share on my network to a drive letter on my xp workstation I've changed approaches and only have a couple of frequently used shares mapped and access everything else as needed from the network neighborhood in win explorer.

Not sure how to check the settings you refer to, if you could tell me I'll check. However, I do permanently map the 192.168.0.x ip addr's to the node names on my workstation/gateway's \windows\system32\drivers\etc\host file.



Marty