Problem with hostname not working

[mauromol]

Hello there!
I'm using firmware 1.9.2.7-d-r2624 and I have the following problem.
Although I've set "wl500gp" in the "Host Name" field of IP Config - LAN & WAN configuration page, I cannot reach the router using "wl500gp" hostname.

For instance, from my Windows 7 client, if I try:
ping wl500gp
I get "cannot find host" problem.

If I log in the router and type: cat /etc/hosts, I get the following output:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.1.1 wl500gp my.router my.WL500gpv2
# other entries follow...

Strange enough, if I type in my client machine either:
ping my.router
or
ping my.WL500gpv2

they work, but:
ping wl500gp
does not.

Any suggestion?
Thanks in advance,
Mauro.

[avberk]

If you ping from your windows7 machine it will look at the host file of windows7

if you ping from your router it will look at the host file from the router.


Thus be sure to add the entries to both host files.

[mauromol]

Hi avberk,
I don't want to manually enter hostnames in the host files of all the systems connected in my network. I've never need to do so when connecting Windows machines or other Linux boxes (like my NAS or the same WL-500gP V2 using the official Asus firmware).

I mean, I have a NAS that has a hostname of "mybookworld": as soon as I connect it to the network, pinging "mybookworld" from any PCs of the network works correctly, without the need to add "mybookworld" to their host files. As I said, this was true for the WL-500gP V2 using the official Asus firmware, but it is not right now.

Why doesn't this work for the router with the custom firmware?

Cheers,
Mauro.

[avberk]

Seems to be some kind of design thing in the oleg firmware.
You can solve it by changing the hostname to something with a dot in it.

wl500gp -> wl500gp.something

or e.g.

wl500gp -> something.wl500gp

[wpte]

yes, that's the way it works.
if you have a computer named "super-gaming-rig" you could resolve just that domain name, but super-gaming-rig.my.router would work also work if I recall it correctly

[mauromol]

Ok, I found the actual solution and it's something near to your latest messages.

The fact is that under the DHCP Server configuration page there must be some domain set. For instance, if you put "my.lan" as the domain name and "wl500gp" as the hostname, then your router will be reachable as both wl500gp and wl500gp.my.lan. This is because the DHCP Server is sending to clients a default connection DNS suffix (domain) of "my.lan".

If you don't specify any domain name, instead, you can't reach the router with its hostname. Maybe you could do that if it had been assigned a hostname with a dot in it (as avberk said), I haven't tried, anyway I think the final solution is to set a domain name.

Thank you for your help!