local network learning

[topr8]

have a local home network of several (windows) computers and have just installed debian on an old one (clean install windows wiped off), i've set the hostname of this machine to: simon

i've done a basic install and it works no problem, i can remotely access the machine from its ip address ( found from ifconfig) however i cannot access it from what i think is the hostname eg. simon

i've checked the hostname with

$ /bin/hostname

and it comes back as simon.

am i missing something? do i need to do something in order for the network to recognise the hostname?

[Birdman]

You'll need to set up a DNS system.

This tutorial seems to cover everything:

howtoforge.com/debian_dns

[topr8]

phew, that was long and interesting working through that, thanks.

...

my router is allocating dynamic ip addresses and it turns out that if i install samba and join it to my workgroup then i can connect to the machine by name from a browser on a windows box.

[jtara]

If you have a small number of computers on your network, you can just add the name to your hosts file on each machine.

If you have a router, often they will have a simple DNS server that you can use to provide name resolution for local machines.