[sf-lug] Fwd: urgent help with networking Linux and Windows at a public school

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Sat, 8 Sep 2007, jim stockford wrote:

>> hi,

Hi, why is this person not a member of the list?

>> As many of you know, I am a volunteer for a public middle school in
>> San Francisco, California.  We are trying to slowly move the school to
>> Linux, piece by piece.  There is another volunteer here who has
>> graciously offered to help us talk to the legacy Windows desktops on
>> the system, but we are having a weird problem. 

Great.

>> Specifically, we are trying to set up a samba server, and whenever the
>> new server is rebooted, it gets a new IP address, and so the Windows
>> boxes try to connect to the old IP addresses.  So that means that the
>> Windows boxes cannot connect to the Linux box anymore. 

Yes, the samba server is configured to get a DHCP server from the internal 
network gateway ("NAT box"), probably.

>> We are able to ping back and forth to and from the windows boxes to
>> the new Ubuntu Linux server, so the boxes can talk to each other.  But
>> the problem seems to be the DNS that isn't working correctly.
>>
>> When we googled, we found nothing that was of any help, oddly.  No one
>> seems to have had this problem, and so we obviously must be asking the
>> wrong question. 

You should configure the Ubuntu server to have a static IP address.  Then 
its IP address will never change.

>> Any tips would be greatly appreciated, because this is the first time
>> that the principal of this school has allowed us to attempt a FOSS
>> solution for a mission-critical application.  We are hoping to
>> showcase the power of FOSS.  Thanks again in advance!

http://www.debianadmin.com/ubuntu-networking-for-basic-and-advanced-users.html 
has a good tour of how to set it to a static address.

You should set it to an IP address that's below the range that the NAT box 
assigns.  Usually IPs ending in 100 or higher are assigned by the NAT box, 
so you could try setting it the current IP but ending in 50.

Let me know if you need more help.  Also let me know if I misunderstand 
the situation!

-- Asheesh.

--
The speed of anything depends on the flow of everything.