This last month I have grown very fond of Ubuntu. I have installed it on some 4 PCs around the house and at work, and it works very well (also, I love Beryl). While I haven’t completely switched from Windows, Linux beats Windows on a server by far.

One of the things I could never get to work is local hostname resolution under Ubuntu. None of the PCs I installed it on could resolve hostnames in the local network (LAN, for those of you who didn’t understand that other term). I searched for days and days, and finally I found how to do it somewhere, but now I don’t remember where. So, I am documenting it here, so that mainly I don’t forget, and in hope that it will be useful to some of you.

To enable WINS resolution in Ubuntu, do the following:

Edit the /etc/nsswitch.conf file, and change this line:

hosts: files dns

to this:

hosts: files wins dns

Then do a sudo aptitude install winbind to install winbind, and everything should work like a charm. I am also fairly certain that you can use samba as a WINS client (or server, whatever it is), but I haven’t tried it, since this solution works. If I ever do, I’ll post it here.