OpenDental application not resolving DNS

[khdilger]

I am getting my new practice (new to me) setup on open dental. I start next Tuesday!!! Anyways I had the conversion team do my final conversion today. They remoted in and installed / configured the server and workstations. When we tried to run/launch OD on the workstations they can not resolve the server by its actual name. I have to put in the IP address of the server instead of the server name. The conversion team at first said it was a problem with the firewall and not allowing any transmission on port 3306 for MySql. Plan was to try a basic switch. Anyways, I tried the straight IP after getting off the phone and it works.

The interesting part is I can ping my open dental server by name on the workstations. The workstation OD application just can't resolve the name.

Can anyone help with a solution other than putting in a static IP for the server computer?

Thanks,
Kenny

[khdilger]

Oh, also AVG has been uninstalled on all computers (however I really doubt that was the issue). The firewall was configured to allow communication through the port (which is obvious by it working with a direct IP).

[afeuer]

I gave that fight up a long time ago. I had it working for a while but then one day it stopped working out of the blue. I've reconfigured the network a bunch of times. Since I've started using DD-WRT on my router it seems to be more reliable. Either way, I now use a static IP address... Just one less thing to go wrong.

-Adam

[khdilger]

Thats interesting.... The conversion team said my problem was the first time this was encountered. If my router is setup to hand out IP's dynamically can I setup one machine to have a static IP (the server)?

[wjstarck]

Sure.

Almost all routers have a setup section where you can set aside certain IPs as reserved so they are not handed out in the DHCP pool...

Also, I'd also highly recommend the DD-WRT firmware if you are using a Linksys router. It's far more stable and reliable than the preinstalled Linksys stuff...

[jordansparks]

Yes, you can set your server to have a fixed IP address, just pick an address that won't conflict with one of the dynamic addresses. Like 192.168.200.0.

[s0mvnguy]

if you are running a Windows server ... with out "Domain", you will need to add the hostname to your DNS server. With Domain structure, when you join a PC to a domain, the IP auto update the DNS entry. If you are running a "Workgroup" [per2per]. You can setup a "hosts" file.

Under %systemroot% [c:\windows for xp, vista, win7] i.e c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc; you will find a file named "host" edit that file with your new entry. You will need to do this for ALL of you PCs.

e.i:
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.4.1 Server1
192.168.4.2 server2

and so on, once you done with this hosts file just copy it to all of your other workstations.

goodluck

[wjstarck]

By 'dental portal' do you mean your router/gateway? If so, let me know the brand name (eg., Linksys) and model number.

[Rickliftig]

Bill - it's likely spam. Rick

[wjstarck]

Arrgh.

If Dante could have foreseen spammers, he probably would have created an separate ring in hell for them...

[jordansparks]

I killed the spam.