Host name help

Hammer8

Thank you! That did the trick. Appreciate everyone’s help. Out of curiosity, why is it under pfsense, I need to specify a MAC address and with my Netgear router, I didn’t have to? Not a big deal, but will need to change the entry in Pfsense if my hardware changes.

JKnott

@Hammer8 said in Host name help:

Hmm...thank you all, but I’m not sure what I need to do.

If the computer is connected to the network, it should have an address. You can go into the Status > DHCP Leases to find that address. You can then click on the "+", 2nd from right, to add a static mapping. You then set the address you want and give it a host name. When you have done this, the device will have a static address and a host name that you can use.

stephenw10

It's not actually using the MAC address there. Entering it as a static lease is a convenient way of getting the hostname/IP address into the DNS resolver. You could also add those as host overrides in the DNS resolver directly and it would have the same effect.
Adding it as a static lease means you don't accidentally assign the IP to another device as it's already in table. It also means if that device changes from static to DHCP for some reason it will pull the same IP address.

Steve

johnpoz

I your client would of been dhcp already, you wouldn't of had to call out the mac - since pfsense would of already known it and you could just clicked the little add button.. in the lease table and put in the IP you wanted the client to use (outside of the dhcp scope)

Hammer8

@stephenw10 said in Host name help:

It's not actually using the MAC address there. Entering it as a static lease is a convenient way of getting the hostname/IP address into the DNS resolver. You could also add those as host overrides in the DNS resolver directly and it would have the same effect.
Adding it as a static lease means you don't accidentally assign the IP to another device as it's already in table. It also means if that device changes from static to DHCP for some reason it will pull the same IP address.

Steve

Hi, I deleted the entries I entered previously under DHCP Static Mappings and re-entered them as host overrides under DNS resolver and it doesn't seem to work. Eg., I can't access the shares as \Piano in Windows explorer. These machines are all part of a WORKGROUP and not part of a DOMAIN so under domain, I entered "local". Is there anything else I need to do? Thank you!

stephenw10

It has to match whatever they were showing up as in the dhcp leases. I expect that to be whatever the pfSense domain is unless you set something specifically in the dhcp server.
Is there some reason you don't want to use dhcp static lease entries for this?

Steve

johnpoz

Your machine will use a domain to resolve dns.. workgroups have nothing to do with it..

In your pfsense what does it say for the domain, see my post above.

On your client what does it say.. do an ipconfig /all

$ ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

   Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : i5-win
   Primary Dns Suffix  . . . . . . . : local.lan
   Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcast
   IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : local.lan

See the local.lan as the primary domain suffix, and the search list..

If you setup a host override for piano.local - then that is what you would have to do a specific dns query for.

Hammer8

@stephenw10 said in Host name help:

It has to match whatever they were showing up as in the dhcp leases. I expect that to be whatever the pfSense domain is unless you set something specifically in the dhcp server.
Is there some reason you don't want to use dhcp static lease entries for this?

Steve

Yes, I remote access into these machines and so need a static IP. When you say it has to match the dhcp leases, how can I find what that is? When I go to view the dhcp leases, these machines don't show up...I thought is was because they are set up as static IP's. Note I set these up with static ip's within Windows.

johnpoz

What does remote access have to do with anything?? When you set a dhcp reservation - that machine will always get that IP.

You can set them up on your machine directly if you want - lot of extra work for nothing.. But your host override will work as well as long as your fqdn (fully qualified domain name) is correct and that is what you query for.

Here..

$ ping piano.local

Pinging piano.local [192.168.9.10] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.9.10: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.9.10: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.9.10: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64

JKnott

@johnpoz said in Host name help:

But your host override will work as well as long as your fqdn (fully qualified domain name) is correct and that is what you query for.

As I mentioned above, it's very easy to just get a DHCP address, find it in the DHCP leases and change it to a static mapping and provide a host name, all on the same page. Otherwise, you have to determine the MAC address and then configure the mapping.

Hammer8

Thanks. I get it now. Don't specify the static ip on the pc. Set it to use DHCP and then in pfsense, make it a static ip on the DHCP leases page. Works great! Thank you.