Why can't my 10.04 Ubuntu use host names?

Question

I can ping ip address and use them to pull up web pages. I cannot use host names whatsoever.

I have my gateway router as the nameserver in the etc resolv.conf file. That's the only line in the file.

Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

Answer 1

i assume your isp is providing dhcp and dns. check if your gateway is resolving.



dig yahoo.com @your_gateway

dig yahoo.com @8.8.8.8



8.8.8.8 is google's public dns

Answer 2

If you are using wireless are you using wicd? Look on the menu bar for the networking icon, click on it and see it you can find your router in that. If you are using wireless and it is not connecting it's possible that your driver requires some firmware you'll have to look up how to get. Or it may just be a password problem. First check to see if you have a connection to the server. That's usually the problem when you can't connect. There is the gui then there are the wireless tools, which it's not recommended to use but are usually on there as a last resort. First make sure your moden -- wired or wireless -- is even working. If it isn't it may be because of firmware and you'll have o look up how to get the firmware.

Answer 3

I am not sure whether this is relevant. But I had a problem with ubuntu 10.04 resolving host names of samba shared network drives on my network. All I had to do was add "wins" to /etc/nsswitch.conf:



sudo gedit /etc/nsswitch.conc



In the file that opens look for the line that starts with "hosts:"



Mine looked like this

hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4



I added "wins" to it so it now looks like

hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns wins mdns4



close and save



Now your samba network shares can be accessed via their host names



Hope this helps