Name resolution on home LAN?

Question

Is there an easy way to allow my other computers to resolve my hostname over the network without having them edit their hosts files or their DNS settings? Some of the computers are on Windows.

score 10 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 22 '17 at 07:46

10

To resolve Avahi hostnames, other computers should have libnss-mdns installed.

Another option, if you are the network administrator is to distribute a private DNS address by DHCP (I your computers are configured by DHCP). For a small network, dnsmasq is good combined package (DNS+DHCP). It allows you to serve simply your /etc/hosts to the network.

edited Feb 22 '17 at 07:46

Zanna

72,312

answered Jan 06 '11 at 20:07

shellholic

5,742

score 8 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

8

In mixed network environments you can do this with name resolutions from Avahi/Zeroconfig that would resolve in Mac-OS as well as in Windows (when Bonjour is running). See also this answer.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

Community

1

answered Jan 06 '11 at 17:58

Takkat

144,580

Chipaca · Answer 3 · 2011-01-07T13:28:27.887

6

In all recent Ubuntu installs you can use hostname.local and it just works. I believe this means mDNS is set up automatically, but as it's always just worked (except with some routers in some hotels, where I'd get a notification about it being disabled because of a broken router), I haven't had to dig in.

edited Jan 07 '11 at 13:28

answered Jan 06 '11 at 20:40

Chipaca

10,130

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 07 '11 at 15:55

2

If you install SAMBA then Windows machines that don't speak mDNS will resolve your hostname using that.

answered Jan 07 '11 at 15:55

psusi

38,031

Name resolution on home LAN?

4 Answers4