I just upgraded an old Ubuntu box to 12.04LTS (machine named A-Ubuntu). This is an upgrade not a format re-install. All the accounts and config were preserved. The basic setup is a local network with 2 Ubuntu machines (let say A-Ubuntu, B-Ubuntu) and a MAC (C-MAC). Before the upgrade, all of them could see each other by their names not only the IP address. The local network has a D-Link Router where everybody is connected with RJ-45 wired etherenet (not wi-fi). Since the A-Ubuntu upgrade, we can't see this machine name on the Network and its name is not on machine list in the D-Link router anymore. We can see it's IP address only. I can't access A-Ubuntu from the other two by its name but I can ping it with its address (192.168.0.109). From A-Ubuntu, I can connect and see the shared samba folders on B-Ubuntu and C-MAC. But from B-Ubuntu and C-MAc, I can't connect to A-Ubuntu.
Correct me if I'm wrong but this tells me that Samba should be fine and the real problem is that A-Ubuntu does not advertise its name on the Network so the D-Link does not have it in its table so nobody else finds it.
After a lot of googling, I see that it is the job of avahi and mdns to do so. Those packages are running, I checked multiple config files for samba, avahi, mdns to see as if it is like the examples on the WEB and also similar to what I find on the working B-Ubuntu machine. This is the same. I did multiple service restart with samba, avahi, remove the firewall to make sure it does not block the hostname broadcast. I rebooted multiple time to make sure the update I was making were effective. Still, Can't see the A-Ubuntu name on the network. Any idea what it can be?, Where to look next?
