Mac browser can't resolve server name into IP

[samson]

We have a Windows 2000 Server running with IIS 5 for our Intranet, and
users are accessing the site with the server name - http://servername/

Problem: Windows browser is able to access the site fine, but Mac
browser gives a "server not found" error. Looks like "servername"
cannot not be resolved into its IP address. When IP address of
"servername" is used, the site becomes accessible. I found a way to
modify the Hosts in Mac OS so that "servername" can be resolved into
its IP, but we can't tell every Mac user to configure their machines.
There's gotta be a way to correct this on the server side... This
happens to both OS 8/9 and OS X Jaguar. Any ideas would be
appreciated!!

 

[William M. Smith]

We have a Windows 2000 Server running with IIS 5 for our Intranet, and
users are accessing the site with the server name - http://servername/

Problem: Windows browser is able to access the site fine, but Mac
browser gives a "server not found" error. Looks like "servername"
cannot not be resolved into its IP address. When IP address of
"servername" is used, the site becomes accessible. I found a way to
modify the Hosts in Mac OS so that "servername" can be resolved into
its IP, but we can't tell every Mac user to configure their machines.
There's gotta be a way to correct this on the server side... This
happens to both OS 8/9 and OS X Jaguar. Any ideas would be
appreciated!!

Hi samson!

WINS can potentially be resolving the names for your browsers on your
Windows machines and DNS may not be working for them as well.

Can you disable WINS on a Windows client and test connecting again? If you
do not connect, then your DNS server is misconfigured.

Hope this helps! bill

 

[samson]

Thanks Bill. I went to WINS tab under Advanced TCP/IP Settings on my
machine (Windows client) and disabled NetBIOS over TCP/IP. This
dosen't allow me to connect - gives me an error saying "Cannot find
server or DNS Error". So is it correct to assume the DNS server is
misconfigured? How can I configure correctly? Any ideas please!

 

[William M. Smith]

Thanks Bill. I went to WINS tab under Advanced TCP/IP Settings on my
machine (Windows client) and disabled NetBIOS over TCP/IP. This
dosen't allow me to connect - gives me an error saying "Cannot find
server or DNS Error". So is it correct to assume the DNS server is
misconfigured? How can I configure correctly? Any ideas please!

Hi samson!

I would start by looking at your DHCP server and making sure it is
configured to hand out DNS server IP addresses to the clients it is leasing
to. Be sure that none of your clients (Macs or Windows) have any DNS entries
entered manually or these will take precedence.

To determine the DNS servers being used on a Mac OS X workstation, open the
Terminal from Applications --> Utilities and type "dig" without the quotes.
Toward the end of the results within the last four lines, you'll see a
SERVER entry, which lists the IP addresses the Mac has listed for DNS.

To determine the DNS servers being used on a Windows workstation, open a DOS
Command Prompt and type "ipconfig /all" without the quotes.

If DHCP is correctly handing out DNS, then check that you have correct
entries for your internal servers listed in DNS as well as reverse lookup
entries.

If you are trying to connect to sites outside of your company's network,
make sure that your DNS server has forwarding addresses pointing to DNS
servers outside your network.

Hope this helps! bill