# Hostnames not resolving, only by SMB/CIFS and one PC



## avattz (Feb 19, 2013)

Hi there,

I'm currently using FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE as a home ZFS file server, but I also wanted to go router-less. I recently set it up to share internet through all Ethernet ports and use a USB wireless adapter as an access point. The problem I'm having is that I cannot ping or SSH my FreeBSD machine from any of the computers connected to it (by Ethernet or wireless) except for one Windows 7 machine. The thing that I find strange is that all computers can mount network share from FreeBSD using hostnames (i.e. SMB://hostname/share).

I can ping all computers using their static IPs but hostnames don't (except for the Windows machine). I know I'm missing something (do I have to setup a DNS server or DHCP?) because when I was using a DD-WRT router, hostnames, DHCP, and IP addresses were working fine with all computers.


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## SirDice (Feb 20, 2013)

You are missing DNS. From windows it will work because it will resort to resolving hostnames using NetBIOS broadcasts.


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## gqgunhed (Feb 20, 2013)

For your scenario maybe have a look at dns/dnsmasq.
That serves as a DHCP- and DNS-server.

The DNS-part is pretty simple as it uses the hosts /etc/hosts and /etc/resolv.conf files. 
But the config file is pretty self-explaining.


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