Cant connect to network server via hostname

felickz

Fresh install of pfsense with one issue, simply using a machines hostname is not allowing me to connect to that box. If i connect with the ip everything works fine (\ip)

I can ping/tracert this server via hostname from my pc, but when i try to access the server+shares via explorer: \hostnamex , windows 7 gives a generic error.

If i attempt to access the shared folder.. \hostnamex\SHARE, it offers to diagnose and comes back with:

The remote device or resource won't accept the connection Detected
The device or resource (hostnamex) is not set up to accept connections on port "The File and printer sharing (SMB)".

Server has a static MAC->IP mapping in pfsense DHCP
ARP Table in pfsense GUI shows IP and MAC for this server BUT the HostName is blank.
Firewall logs not showing any LAN traffic blocked

IF it helps:

This is my first time setting up pfsense so all settings are default, DNS pointing to my ISP on the General Settings, havent touched firewall rules

DSL Modem(dhcp) –-- pfsense(dhcp) ---- Router/Switch in bridge mode -------- pcs/server

The Server is Windows Home Server(Win 2003), PCs are Win7.

Any ideas? I am just perplexed how pfsense changes any of this behavior on the LAN

jimp

Hard to say what might be different in that case. You can run Wireshark to look at the traffic on the windows box to see if it looks different when going by name than by IP.

felickz

Well i finally ended up rebooting all devices, clearing dns cache locally and it started working :D Initially i did not have the home server configured to use dhcp so it might have been some bad static config to start with (then i set it to auto and gave static assignment in DHCP)

Weird thing is that the ARP table in PFSENSE is still blank for this static assignment in DHCP server… Is there any good reason for this behavior? (all my other pcs have hostnames here)

IP address MAC address Hostname Interface
========= ============== ======== =======
192.168.2.111 00:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX LAN

GruensFroeschli

The ARP table is used to determine if a client is online/offline on the DHCP-leases page.

It would be only always in the ARP table if you activated the "Enable Static ARP entries" option.
Of course in this case the DHCP-leases page then always shows the device as "online" regardless of the actual status.

But as soon as the client communicated with pfSense the device should show up in the table.