(slightly) newbie OSX and Linux network Q.

influx

Registered
Hi everyone,

I've got a problem here that I don't even know how to start fixing.

We run an appletalk network here in the office, using OS9 server, which handles file and print sharing for the whole network. The one Windows box on the network uses PCmacLAN to talk to the network, and the one Linux box uses netatalk. This all works fine - we can all swap files merrily.

Now, my problem. The linux box is used as a dev server running Apache, mysql and PHP, one OSX box has an almost identical setup, and the Windows box is running IIS/PHP/SQLServer for MS development.

Now, we can all connect to these (local) webservers without a problem, as long as we specify IP address. e.g. http://62.49.5.205/. What I want to be able to do is use the machines name (the Linux box has a hostname of linuxbox, the OSX is called osxbox). so, rather than using the IP address, I want the OS9 machines to be able to just type http://linuxbox/, and get that name resolved. That doesnt happen. The machines scurry off to look for http://www.linuxbox.com instead.

How can i sort this out? Bearing in mind that the server her is OS9.....

Thanks in advance!
 
Provided that you do not have a DNS server running.

In all OSes there is a hosts file located in the system directory

In OS 9, its in System Folder
In Linux, /etc/hosts
In Windows, Windows System:: hosts

In each of these files, you have to populate it with the ip address to name.
e.g.
192.168.1.1 linux
192.168.1.2 mac
192.168.1.3 windows

you can append domains if you want at the end of the hostnames, it doesn't matter. Keep in mind if this domain exists on the internet you will not be able to get to it through your gateway because it will be resolving locally.
 
I have this working on windoze 2000, but I can't get it to work with OS9.
In my hosts file I have:
athlon CNAME 192.168.123.3
mail CNAME 192.168.123.2
mac CNAME 192.168.123.1
router CNAME 192.168.123.254

I've tried using A in place of CNAME but it still doesn't work.

I haven't tried it yet in OSX.

What's wrong with what I have? If it type in mail in the browser location, or type http://mail it doesn't work for me. It tries to load www.mail.com.
 
Originally posted by testuser
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that by default a DNSlookup is carried out before the hosts file is consulted. As a result, you cannot override existing domain names; you must select non-existent domain names for your hosts, e.g. jwmail instead of mail. In this case it appears that someone has registered mail and made it point to www.mail.com.

There might be some way to change the lookup order under OS 9, i.e. check your hosts before a DNS server. I am not sure how to do this.

It would be most helpful if someone else could explain (step-by-step) how to do this for either OS 9 or OS X. (Please!!!)

Hmm, you might be right about that. I'm not sure how you would change the order either.
 
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