Best way to identify clients

[jayrock]

Hello,

I want to check if certain clients connected to my HDA are active, using ICMP Ping. I can ping the IP addresses, but I can't ping the hostnames. arp -a delivers:

Code: Select all

h033.home.com (192.168.0.33) at 6c:f0:49:df:02:9b [ether] on eth0 h145.home.com (192.168.0.145) at 00:1b:11:4c:25:df [ether] on eth0 h101.home.com (192.168.0.101) at <incomplete> on eth0 h098.home.com (192.168.0.98) at 00:1e:64:3f:c1:74 [ether] on eth0

Now the problem is that the name of the clients is just "h" + the host address assigned by the DHCP. DHCP does *not* run on HDA but on the router, as I want to be able to use the internet even if HDA is not running. DNS is running one the HDA, but I'm not sure what happens if I switch that one off.

How can ping my clients using the real hostname, which are also shown when I open "Places - Network" in Fedora?

Another approach I'm considering is using the MAC addresses rather than the host names. This will be a safe way to identify clients, however it's not very user friendly (and I haven't figured out yet how to request a remote MAC address...)

Thanks for your help,
jayrock

[rgmhtt]

See if fping can help you.

yum install fping

[jayrock]

Same problem.

fping 'hostname_set_in_client' doesn't work
fping 'hostname_in_hda_arptable' does work

But noone knows before running arp on HDA what 'hostname_in_hda_arptable' really is.

I strongly consider using the MAC address, it's not convenient, but at least one can find it out without opening a terminal on HDA.

Cheers

jayrock

[jayrock]

Just saw this: http://bugs.amahi.org/issues/show/681

So maybe DNS is actually not deactivated, when I though it would.

To test if this is the true problem, what's the graceful way to disable DNS?

Cheers
jayrock

[bigfoot65]

I would say to stop the DNS server in Amahi. Go to the Settings Tab and find the Servers area.

You can also check the wiki as there is guidance in there for using other DNS providers.

http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Changin ... S_provider

[jayrock]

Ok, thanks but didn't work. I'll park this one for the moment, more urgent things to figure out.

[rgmhtt]

To determine if DNS is running:

service named status

To determine if DNS will start at boot:

chkconfig --list | grep named

Of course turning this all to off, will not stop monit for starting it. Best way to control that is from the settings panel.

To now use your system without DNS follow my comments in bug 681. I had written up a Wiki page, but it read too much like sour grapes about disabling DNS on Amahi.

Note I have 2 Amahi servers up on running. One is my Network server running as a PDC and providing all the nice network services for the subnet it is on.

The other is my mail server. On this one practically EVERY Amahi service is disabled, except those needed by Amahi and the Mail system.

On the former, with last night updates I had to repatch shares.rb so that my home share came in as drive h not drive q

I did not have to patch anything on my mail server; this time.