RE: laptop connecting to a KDM server, worked yesterday, but not today

["Harold Hunt" <huntharo at msu dot edu>]

Steiner,

> Is KDM, samba, and cygwin-xfree86 involved in a
> complicated three way dance, perhaps...?
> (this is just a wild guess...:-) ).

First things first, Samba has nothing at all to do with this.

> We have a strange behaviour, in that a laptop that
> was able to have KDM open a login dialog on
> its cygwin-xfree86 server yesterday, is unable to open
> the dialog today.

Something has changed in your computer or network configuration (either by
direct or indirect action).

> Oct  5 11:22:37 no-video2 kdm[337]: Cannot convert Internet address
> 172.21.150.71 to host name

It doesn't seem that 172.21.206.140 and 172.21.150.71 would be on the same
local network, so there are likely all order of routers and reverse name
servers between them.  It is possible that a hosts file was setup, and
subsequently forgotten about, with the name to address mapping for
172.21.150.71; when the address changed the mapping no longer applied, thus
kdm couldn't figure out the host name.

> One thing that has changed, is that the laptop has probably
> gotten a new IP
> number from DHCP today.

As I suspected.

> This could explain why it's unable to reverse resolve
> the address today, but it doesn't seem to be the
> critical part of the log messages above.

You have to assume that the message about reverse resolution is critical, as
it is the only informational message that you have.

Start off by adding the new IP address and hostname to the Debian machine's
/etc/hosts file.  If kdm works, then contact your network administrator to
figure out a more permanent solution.  Or, you could try the '-from
%HOSTNAME_OR_IP_ADDRESS' parameter for XWin.exe, for example '-from
foo.gazzy.com', that may give kdm the hostname that it needs.

Harold