Can't Ping Local computers (by name)

[Lonniebiz]

In an environment where MS Windows is the primary domain controller, I've added Zentyal 3.4 as an additional domain controller.

Also, this same server is successfully providing Jabber service for the LAN, where users are successfully consuming Jabber via Pidgin (where they are logging in successful with their Active Directory user credentials).

For testing, I've manually configured my laptop so that it only uses the Zentyal 3.4 server for DNS. Through Zentyal, my laptop is resolving the IP address of public websites just fine.

However, I can't seem to ping local machines by name, even if I include their fully qualified local domain name.

For example, I have computer named "test" at 192.168.100.5 and its fully qualified domain name would be test.company.local.

If I tried to ping just "test" I get:

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ping: unknown host test
If I try to ping test.company.local I get:

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ping: unknown host test.company.local
This Zentyal Additional Domain controller is located at 192.168.100.3. I'm able to verify that it knows where test.company.local is with this command:

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dig @192.168.100.3 test.company.local
This correctly returns 192.168.100.5.

But yet, if I ping "test" or test.company.local it says it is an unknown host. It's the same for any machine on the LAN. It won't even ping the Zentyal server itself by name.

Why would the dig command prove that this additional domain controller knows the ip of test.company.local, while ping doesn't resolve the host?

Shouldn't LDAP be telling DNS these local machine names and their IPs?

[Lonniebiz]

I've been reading documentation today.

One thing I have never truly understand, in Zentyal, is how the domain controller and DNS work with each other.

I'm using Zentyal 3.4 as an additional domain controller, where the primary domain controller is a Windows Active Directory. This Zentyal server is clearly successful at doing AD authentication (because Pidgin users are consuming Zentyal's Jabber service using their AD credentials).

So, I know that AD is propagating to Zentyal fine.

However, how much does AD tell Zentyal? Does it tell Zentyal the IP addresses of all machines on the LAN? It clearly tells the names of all the computers joined to the domain; that can be seen in the OFFICE > Users and Computers section of the Zentyal web interface.

So having a list of computer names is one step towards being able to provide DNS for those names, but does it also get (from the primary domain controller) the IP addresses currently associated with each computer name?

If so, why doesn't it pass this information along to the INFRASTRUCTURE > DNS (server), so that workstation trying to ping other computers (by name) can resolve those local IP addresses?

So far, in my testing, I've set my laptop to consume DNS from this Zentyal "additional domain controller", but I see no clear and automatic way to make this DNS server aware the IPs of local computer names.

[Lonniebiz]

In another environment, where Zentyal is both primary and secondary domain controller, I have no issue resolving IPs by name. This documentation reveals why:
https://wiki.zentyal.org/wiki/Dynamic_DNS

Apparently, Zentyal DNS and DHCP work together to achieve this.

However, in this environment, where Windows is doing primary AD, DNS, and DHCP, I'm not sure the Zentyal DNS can be informed of such things. I'm not sure how to make it a legitimate DNS that local machines can use for both local and remote hostnames.