How to make old (Windows) hostname resolve to new (Linux) server?

Question

We currently have a basic Windows PC running a Flexnet network license server. We want to move the license server to a Hyper-V Virtual Machine (VM) on a more-suitable machine (one with RAID and redundant power supplies). The VM is running CentOS Linux. There is NO Active Directory involved.

The (Windows) client machines connect to the old license server using its hostname (let's call it 'lmserver'). Currently the Linux VM is called 'LS2' (will be changed to 'lmserver' when I have everything configured) but only responds to ping if I use its IP address ('ping LS2' does not work).

The web searches I have done so far suggested the following options for making hostname resolution work with Linux, but I'm not sure which would be appropriate for this case.

• Avahi
• SAMBA (or possibly only part of it, perhaps Winbind)
• Link-Local Multicast Name Resolution (LLMNR)
• DNS
• Hosts file modification on all client computers

Of these, the only one I feel I understand well enough to know it would do want I want is to add a name -> IP address mapping to the hosts file on each PC. However, there are rather a lot of PCs and I would rather make one central modification (otherwise I could reconfigure each PC to use the IP address to connect to the license server instead of the hostname). The examples I have seen with Avahi suggest that a .local suffix has to be added to the hostname, which would rule that out as an option as well.

Most of the comments I have read appear to recommend avoiding anything based on NetBIOS/WINS (which I think SAMBA/Winbind are) in favour of DNS. However in my experience DNS requires a domain (eg. the server would have to be lmserver.mycompany.com instead of just lmserver which again would force me to reconfigure every PC). We do have a local DNS server (on our Synology NAS) which keeps the NAS's DNS address (lets call it fserver.mycompany.com) working for VPN clients (the VPN server is also on the Synology currently, which means VPN clients are given IP addresses in a different subnet to computers on-site but we hope to move the VPN server (probably to a new router) in future too).

So, what do I need to do to get our PCs to obtain their software license from the new (VM) license server? If I should use SAMBA, do I need all of it and if not which part(s) should I install?

Answer 1

You simply need to run a DNS server. This will allow you to redirect all queries addressed to the old Windows server to the new Linux server.

I'd recommend DNSmasq for getting started. It's quite simple to configure.

Installation instructions: https://linuxscriptshub.com/install-dnsmasq-centos-6-9/

General Configuration Help: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/dnsmasq#Configuration

Configuring a redirect: https://askubuntu.com/questions/53523/how-to-redirect-a-url-to-a-custom-ip-address

Answer 2

FLEXnet licenses are generated with the MAC address of the server adapter inside the .lic's file usually. That detail is not written about online, but it can block the setup you want to achieve.

As such, you will need more than the hostname to match, it must match the MAC address.

If you still have support on those licences, it's easy to go regenerate them usually (if we talk ACad in example)

Inside the linux VM you can issue that to see if the FLEXNet hostname is set correctly;

./lmutil lmhostid -hostname

lmhostid - Copyright (c) 1989-2015 Flexera Software LLC. All Rights Reserved.

The FlexNet Host ID of this machine is "HOSTNAME= mycomputerHostname."

You need SAMBA to set a hostname, but most of all you need the FLEXNet deamon to be running and the DNS setup correctly for your client computer to find the FLEXNet server by the hostname.

Can I ask why you don't do a P2V of that Windows machine ? as managing a Windows FlexNet server is usually more easy than on linux for that part, for that reason I would do a P2V and copy the MAC address of the PC into the host, and your server would be ready after without any more change.