How To Ping NETBIOS Names On Ubuntu

I make heavy use of the ping utility on a daily basis and it absolutely galls me that Ubuntu cannot ping hostnames by default. I need to use the nmblookup utility to find the ip address of the machine I want to ping and then ping that ip address… primitive, silly, unnecessarily complex… I feel a rant about idiotic default settings and legal gymnastics surrounding the universe repository coming up so I’ll just get on with the post. 😀

1) Back up and edit the /etc/nsswitch.conf file by copying and pasting the following commands:

sudo cp /etc/nsswitch.conf /etc/nsswitch.conf.original

gksu gedit /etc/nsswitch.conf

2) Add wins to the hosts directive:

hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] wins dns mdns4

3) Install WINBIND:

sudo apt-get install winbind

4) Ping away. 🙂