NoMachines client access to Gnome on F7 (Alex) (Tim) (Alex)

[J. Alex Aycinena]

On 10/18/07, Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-10-18 at 11:35 -0700, J. Alex Aycinena wrote:
> > The router is a Linksys NR041. When looking at its DHCP Client Table,
> > all the machines, Windows and Fedora, have their proper names shown,
> > so the Fedora machines seem to be forwarding their names to the router
> > properly when they get their IP addresses. I can't see anything in the
> > documentation that came with the router, nor the website, to indicate
> > whether or not it can function as a DNS.
>
> I'm not familiar with it, but many do not.  That table just gives *you*
> information about what's going on, DHCP-wise.
>
> It's simple enough to test, though.  Use the dig tool.  Ask the Linksys
> to resolve a machine name for you.
>
> Syntax: dig requestaddress @resolveraddress
>
> (The lack of the space after the @ sign is deliberate.)
>
> e.g. dig mybox @192.168.1.254
>
> And the "ANSWER SECTION" should give you an IP for that request.
> (That's presuming that your router was at 192.168.1.254, it may not be.)
>
> Also try the reverse lookup, if that works.  Take the IP belonging to
> mybox (let's say it's 192.168.1.1), and ask the resolver to tell you the
> hostname for it.
>
> e.g. dig -x 192.168.1.1 @192.168.1.254
>
> And the "ANSWER SECTION" should give you a hostname for that request.
>

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it and received the reply
"connection timed out; no server could be reached" so I guess the
router can't function as a DNS.

> > Because the router is the only device that is reliably turned on on
> > the network when any particular computer is turned on, I would prefer
> > to have it play the DHCP and DNS role rather than any of the
> > computers. Also because of laptops and occassional guest computers on
> > the LAN, I don't want to use fixed IP addresses (1 Vista desktop, 1
> > Vista laptop, occasionally a couple of other Windows machines, 1 to 3
> > Fedora desktops - typically from 0 to 4 machines turned on at any
> > time).
>
> You *can* still use fixed addresses for your own machines.  Just pick
> ones out of the range the DHCP will dole out.
>
> > Do you know how to indicate to the Fedora boxes that the router is the
> > DNS? Perhaps I don't have that configured right; I could just try that
> > and see if it works.
>
> You'll probably find that the router has a DHCP server that tells all
> the clients which DNS server to use, either itself, or it'll pass on the
> IP addresses that the ISP gave as their own DNS servers.  You should be
> able to configure your router to declare the DNS servers that you want
> to use.
>
> NB:  Just because the router can act as a DNS server for your LAN,
> doesn't mean that it'll resolve local names.  It may just act as a relay
> proxy for your ISP's DNS servers.

This seems to be the case for this router (that it, it passes on the
ISPs DNS IP addresses to the LAN machines - it doesn't act as a DNS
itself). I successfully used the dig command with www.google.com and
one of the DNS addresses passed on by the router from my ISP.

>
> > If after trying that it doesn't work (that is the router fails to work
> > as a DNS) then is it possible to have the router continue functioning
> > as the DHCP and set up the F7 box as a local DNS for the LAN (although
> > I'm not sure how it could get its information to do that)?
>
> Yes, but I think you wouldn't have enough configuration options in your
> router to make its DHCP server update your local DNS server, they'd be
> independent.  If you're going to have a local machine act as a DNS
> server, then you may as well get it to be the DHCP server, too.  In that
> case, you'd turn off the DHCP server in your router, and let your
> machine answer all queries.
>
> > I guess a third option is to try and get the Fedora boxes to get the
> > name resolution however the Vista machine is doing it (you guessed
> > perhaps using Windows networking). Can this be done using Samba and
> > then somehow making the information available to the native Linux
> > mechanisms so that you could successfully ping the Vista machine from
> > the Fedora machine using its name?
>
> If you have a working DNS server, then all the machines will use that.
> I think Windows will even use it in preference to SMB for resolving
> names when it does Windows filesharing.  It'll certainly use DNS in
> preference to SMB for other name resolution reasons.
>
> I have a local DHCP and DNS server running on Fedora, and all machines
> use it for name resolution, Windows 95 through to Vista, included.
>

I guess my best bet, if I find I need to access the non-Fedora
machines from the Fedora ones through something other than Samba, is
to use fixed IP addresses for the non-Fedora computers and to refer to
those fixed addresses from the Fedora boxes.

At least for what I was originally trying to do, which is to access
Fedora from Vista with an NX Client, I can use names without resorting
to fixed IP addresses since Vista can somehow do the name resolution.

Now if I could only figure out how to solve my original problem: how
to get the NX Client to display Gnome properly!