Cannot Ping Linux Server From Windows Terminal

Question

Hi Guys
Please forgive me if this is a really stupid quesion but I am very new to Linux.
I have recently installed Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 onto a server with the server name: oradbsvr
After following a tutorial from otn, I have successfully installed a 10g Database (10.2.0.1) and Apex 3.1 and APACHE. Whilst operating on the Linux box locally, all urls for the EM console and Apex work fine:
e.g.
http://oradbsvr:7777/pls/apex
When i try and access any of the EM or Apex sites from my windows box, I have to replace the hostname oradbsvr with its ip address (192.168.1.14)
This is the same at the cmd prompt from windows in that I can ping the Linux machine by ip but not hostname.
Since the Linux box will eventually be switched over to use DHCP, manually adding an IP address to the windows host file is not an option.
I guess my question is what do i need to do on the Linux box so that it can accessed via its hostname when using DHCP?
Thanks for any suggestions
Duncs

Answer 1

Hi, Duncs!
Well, you need do nothing to the Linux box; that is not how the naming system works. You will need a way to have your Windows boxen know how to look up the server name in your naming service.
For example, you probably have a line in the "/etc/hosts" file on you Linux box that looks something like:
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx oradbsvr
If not, then your sys admin has defined an entry in the Domain Naming Service (DNS) or the WINDOWS equivalent. Your WINDOWS boxen need to be able to resolve the name to an IP address; that's not done by your Linux server.
Is your Linux box part of a local network domain? If so, it will have a fully-qualified domain name (FQDN, in the lingo). Perhaps oradbsvr.mynet.mycompany.com; if so, your WINDOWS boxen will need to use the whole FQDN name unless they have "mynet.mycompany.com" as their default DNS search list.
Life will be much easier if your sysadmin will use DHCP to assign a fixed IP address to the server and then you configure your WINDOWS TCP/IP services to use the same DNS service as the Linux box.
So, to make a long story short (too late, alas!) is that the problem is in your client setup, not the Linux server. Your network admin can make quick work of this, if you have one.
Cheers