Hello, all ...

My home network consists of two Macs (a dual 2ghz G5 and a 1.5ghz 12" PowerBook G4) as well as a mini-ITX x86 box running Gentoo Linux. I've set up Howl on the Gentoo machine so that my Macs can find it easily, and this works really well. However, i'd like to be able to have my Gentoo machine also find my Macs ... but this doesn't seem to work. An example:

(machines: the G5 is "pugs", the PowerBook is "pugsleybutt" and the Gentoo machine is "pugspoo" -- yes, I name all of my computers after my dog in some way <smile>)

... from my PowerBook:

PugsleyButt:~ jmzorko$ ping pugspoo.local
PING pugspoo.local (10.0.1.3): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.1.3: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.993 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.3: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.027 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.3: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=2.722 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.3: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=1.192 ms
^C
--- pugspoo.local ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.993/1.484/2.722/0.719 ms
PugsleyButt:~ jmzorko$

... from my G5:

pugs:~ jmzorko$ ping pugspoo.local
PING pugspoo.local (10.0.1.3): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.1.3: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=1.834 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.3: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.199 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.3: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=1.209 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.3: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=1.271 ms
^C
--- pugspoo.local ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 1.199/1.378/1.834 ms
pugs:~ jmzorko$

... from the Gentoo machine:

jmzorko@pugspoo ~ $ ping pugs.local
ping: unknown host pugs.local
jmzorko@pugspoo ~ $ ping pugsleybutt.local
ping: unknown host pugsleybutt.local
jmzorko@pugspoo ~ $

The Macs can ping each other as well as the Gentoo machine, but the Gentoo machine can't ping the Macs by their hostname. The nifd and mDNSResponder daemons are set to run on bootup on the Gentoo box. I'm thinking i've only done half of the work needed to get everyone happily talking ... has anyone else set up their Gentoo box to live happily on a network full of Macs using Bonjour / Howl? What am I doing wrong / not doing?

Regards,

John

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