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Kinja'd!!! "TheRealBicycleBuck" (therealbicyclebuck)
09/10/2016 at 19:30 • Filed to: None

Kinja'd!!!3 Kinja'd!!! 9

My ancient file/print server has been running rather poorly lately, so I decided to put my Raspberry Pi to use in its stead. Setup was fairly straightforward and connecting the various Win7/8 machines to the new print server was easy. If you want to give it a try, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! has a pretty good tutorial

Kinja'd!!!

Then came the two Win 10 boxes.

I tried every permutation of the ip:port, the host & printer name, and every different type of service (ip and named computer) that I could think of. I finally found someone who suggested I try editing the hosts file. Sure enough, adding the print server name and pointing it to a static ip address for the Raspberry Pi finally solved the problem. Hallelujah.

Reference:

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Thanks Pricilla@HP!


DISCUSSION (9)


Kinja'd!!! 1111111111111111111111 > TheRealBicycleBuck
09/10/2016 at 19:55

Kinja'd!!!0

Nice solve! The hosts file can be dangerous, I’d you get a virus for example, so keep that in mind if you ever find yourself going to the wrong website... The root of the issue sounds like you’re trying to use an external DNS for your internal systems. I’m pretty sure you could tack on DNS to the PI then it could resolve addresses external, and hold the internal DNS.


Kinja'd!!! 1111111111111111111111 > TheRealBicycleBuck
09/10/2016 at 19:59

Kinja'd!!!0

Oh yeah I think NetBIOS is disabled by default on win 10. Id check, but I don’t have and non domain computers. That’s likely the cause. If it is disabled leave it there.


Kinja'd!!! TheRealBicycleBuck > 1111111111111111111111
09/10/2016 at 20:24

Kinja'd!!!0

It’s one of those issues where I’m hosting a few systems which spend most of their time outside of my network and are tied to domains when they are in their normal environment. They don’t like making the transition to the home network where they aren’t part of the “in” crowd. Really, only the Win10 machines were giving me problems. I had more trouble with the old setup where the printer was hosted on an XP box.


Kinja'd!!! 1111111111111111111111 > TheRealBicycleBuck
09/10/2016 at 20:42

Kinja'd!!!0

Then it sound definitely like NetBIOS. You don’t have anything inside your network resolving DNS. Older stuff will use netbios so you can find local stuff. It’s an ancient insecure protocol, best left off. The path going forward would be to make the pi a DNS server, so that your internal DHCP hands out an address it gives the pi as the DNS server. Then when the pi gets a local request it will serve up a local address. When it gets an external request it will ask an external DNS server. The beauty of that is there is a single place to make changes internally and it will cache requests so it speeds up i teener a bit.


Kinja'd!!! TheRealBicycleBuck > 1111111111111111111111
09/10/2016 at 21:25

Kinja'd!!!0

My router is handling addressing and DHCP. I'm not going to move those duties to he Pi since our router also provides blacklist and time schedule functions. Now that the printer issue is solved, I think we're good. I appreciate the feedback!


Kinja'd!!! 1111111111111111111111 > TheRealBicycleBuck
09/10/2016 at 21:29

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I wasn’t suggesting moving DHCP. Just creating a DNS server.


Kinja'd!!! TheRealBicycleBuck > 1111111111111111111111
09/10/2016 at 21:36

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I’m not sure the two systems having issues even look for a local DNS. One is my wife’s work laptop and the other is my daughter’s school laptop. Both are under someone else’s control.


Kinja'd!!! 1111111111111111111111 > TheRealBicycleBuck
09/10/2016 at 21:41

Kinja'd!!!0

They look for the DNS server that your DHCP server gives them. So they almost certainly have NetBIOS turned off, so they have no way to discover local resource. It’s something you’ll likely need to figure out at some point. Netbios is going away, and was old a decade ago.


Kinja'd!!! 1111111111111111111111 > TheRealBicycleBuck
09/10/2016 at 21:43

Kinja'd!!!0

And sure they are controlled by a 3rd party. No problem there. They will respect settings given them by a DHCP server though.