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March 9, 2009

HOWTO: Access Windows machines by their names on Eee PC

Filed under: Blog — krkhan @ 8:25 pm

More often than not, Linux users will end up in a situation where they’d need to access their Windows neighbors on LAN. This can easily be accomplished using IP addresses, but using NetBIOS names is just too convenient to be overlooked.

The Xandros distro on Asus’ Eee PC does not resolve NetBIOS names by default. To make it perform that, you can do the following:

[user@host ~]$ sudo apt-get install samba samba-common smbclient winbind
[user@host ~]$ sudo kwrite /etc/nsswitch.conf

Once the editor opens, spot the line:

hosts: files dns

And append “wins” at its end, making it:

hosts: files dns wins

Save the file, exit the text-editor, back on command-line:

[user@host ~]$ sudo /etc/init.d/samba start
[user@host ~]$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Reconnect your network, and viola — easy peasy, Eee PC!

Screenshot of Eee PC accessing a Windows PC on LAN by name
(Click on the thumbnail for larger version.)

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