Hard to locate hostnames

If you've got a large mixed environment you can't depend on one naming service to know everyone on the network. Whether it's the old WINS or DNS as your main server, some machines will fall through. If they are coming in from the outside, they are almost always going to be in DNS somewhere. It's just tough to find out where. There are some machines that I still haven't found names for, but here is what I do.
I start with the obvious -- simple nslookups with your default name server. No need to work any harder than you have to.

If that fails then follow these steps:

1. Try querying for a SMB name (WINS/ Samba/LANManager...) via these commands:
on winDOS/NT: 'nbtstat -A 10.10.10.10'
on samba machine: 'nmblookup -A 10.10.10.10'

2. Get down and dirty with nslookup and whois when a machine is out on the internet.
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$whois 10.10.10 #using network portion of the IP address and not the host
{Sometimes, inexplicably, this doesn't go a strong query. If that happens go to

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http://www.arin.net/whois/index.html. At any rate you can get the specific information you need, or at least who the parent of that subnet is. Then use that info in some whois and/or nslookup queries.)

$nslookup
>set q=ns #queries to name servers
>10.10.10.
>server
>set q=any
>10.10.10.10

This was first published in May 2001

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