Mac can't ping FQDN in windows environment

[guest]

I am the only Mac guy in an all Win company. We recently moved company locations and I have now run into a problem and cannot solve it, neither myself of the Network admin.

Here is my problem, I have a G5 (running 10.4., and I have my IP address, and received my IP info and everything else through the auto DHCP setting, and I am able to ping with servers using the IP address, but unable to ping/connect to them when I use the server name, i.e. tomtom.

I am able to load website, even the ones I have never been to, but not able to connect to anything local. When I ping by the server name I get an error stating unable to resolve "tomtom".

I have tried everything I can think of and nothing is working. Any ideas?


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You need to first check what DNS servers your Mac is using.
Normally the DHCP server will automatically set up the DNS servers as well but it seems not to be working for you.

You can see what DNS servers are currently in use by running the following command (in a Terminal window):

cat /etc/resolv.conf

Check with your Network admin if those DNS servers are the correct ones.
You might need to explicitly enter the correct DNS servers in the Network Preferences (in the TCP/IP section)

Or the problem might merely be that you need to enter a "Search Domain" in the TCP/IP section of Network Preferences - e.g. something like: yourcompany.com

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If you can resolve a full name (tomtom.yourcompany.com) then your issue is that you need to specify a search domain (or use the full name).

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I have checked the DNS servers in the terminal, and they are correct.

I just tried to ping the main server by using the full name (tomtom.XXX.XXX.com) and was able to ping it. So I tried a couple of other servers replacing tomtom for the server name and got it. I then entered the "XXX.XXX.com" into the "search domain" and then went to try and ping the server just by the name. Eveything worked.

Thank you guys soo much, I knew it was going to be something I was overlooking and was very simple.

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You can add the domain suffix from the windows 2003 dhcp server So you dont need to put it in the search domains. I am sure its either option 06 or option 15 but would need to double check.

THe command ipconfig getpacket en0 is very useful for checking that kinda stuff.