Networking hassles on a home network

[Karl Auer]

On Sun, 2009-10-25 at 01:18 -0700, Joshua Solomin wrote:
> I have a home network behind a wireless router, and I want to be able
> to see the different computers -- a desktop and a laptop both running
> Windows Vista, in addition to my Ubuntu machine.
> [...]
> From Vista, I can ping the IP address but not the hostname of the
> Ubuntu box, and I can't SSH to it under either IP or hostname.

To access the Ubuntu box via ssh, you will need to make sure that ssh is
installed on it:

   sudo apt-get install openssh-server

If you have any kind of firewall or packet filter on the Ubuntu host,
you will need to make sure that these are not blocking port 22, which
ssh uses.

You will be unable to access your Ubuntu box by name (or indeed access
any of the hosts on your network by name) unless you set up some form of
name resolution - a means of converting a name into an IP address. One
way would be to set up your own nameserver, but that is quite a bit of
work. A simpler way is to make suitable entries in your hosts file. For
Ubuntu, edit the file /etc/hosts and add one line for each of your
computers. You'll need to do this using sudo. Each line looks like this:

   192.168.1.10 mycomputer.domain

Obviously substitute the correct addresses and names for the ones shown.
The downside of this method is that you need to make these entries on
each computer in your network. The cool thing is you can use any names
you like, pretty much :-)

For Vista, edit C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts. You will need to
do this as the administrator.[1]

Some home routers have primitive DNS server facilities, so check that
option out too.

If you are getting IP addresses via DHCP from your home router, you will
need to set up your router so that it always sends particular addresses
to particular hosts. If that isn't possible, make hosts entries for all
the possible addresses your router may issue - you'll find that a given
host will get the same address every time unless you restart the router.
Alternatively, bite the bullet and configure your hosts with static
addresses.[2]


Regards, K.

[1] This is a guess - I don't use Vista so can't check.
[2] Or run your own DHCP server :-)

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)

GPG fingerprint: 07F3 1DF9 9D45 8BCD 7DD5 00CE 4A44 6A03 F43A 7DEF

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