How to reach a computer by hostname on a LAN?

[Jason Powers]

Sorry if my reply was 'off', I read Chris' email and assumed he was 
talking about a home LAN, since I get this question so often at work. My 
advice works for the home setup, Gene's works best if you're at work.

Jason

Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Tuesday 28 December 2004 01:25, Christopher J. Bottaro wrote:
> 
>>Simple setup.  I have a router that assigns IP addresses by DHCP.  I
>>have two linux machines:  compa and compb which get their IP
>>addresses using DHCP with the router.  From compa, I want to be
>>able to say "ping compb" instead of having to use ifconfig on compb
>>to figure out what its IP address is, then ping it (i.e. "ping
>>192.168.1.3").
>>
>>How is this possible?  Manually editing the /etc/hosts file doesn't
>>work because the IP addresses can change at boot (or whenever DHCP
>>is used to get a new address).
>>
>>Thanks.
> 
> 
> Turn off the dhcp in the router and use the /etc/hosts file to do the 
> resolving.  You can use the same hosts file throughout your local 
> network.  I've been doing that here for 6 or 7 years.  You'll have to 
> assign the local ip address per machine in 
> the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 scripts also, which 
> will give a fixed address for that machine.  To me, dhcp on a small 
> home network, or even on an 80+ machine business internal network is 
> a waste of time and resources.  But then thats just my opinion too.
> 
> One could even setup a cron job on those machines that have a cron, to 
> grab the master copy of the hosts file and refresh it if the network 
> is being constantly changed.  That would take a load off the IT guy, 
> who usually has his own pool of alligators to wrestle.
>