What role does reverse dns play in samba connections? (was Re: Can't connect to samba from foreign network...)

[Frank R. Brown]

Send reply to:  	list.Frank at MailAndNews.com
From:           	"Frank R. Brown" <list.Frank at MailAndNews.com>
To:             	Multiple recipients of list <samba at samba.org>
Subject:        	Can't connect to samba from foreign network --- 'Gethostbyaddr failed' error in log.smb
Date sent:      	Fri, 28 May 1999 08:46:49 +1000

Where does reverse dns come in to samba's ability/willingness to
accept a connection?

I'm going nuts here trying to get samba to accept connections from
the same nt clients on a foreign network that can without issue to
shares on an nt server.

The straw I'm chasing now is the issue of reverse dns because of
some (to my mind) cryptic references to it in (to my mind)
unrelated parts of the samba doc, and because of the
'Gethostbyaddr failed' messages in the log file.

So what is it the nt servers got that samba hasn't got?  I can't
figure out what to enable (some kind of ip/netbios name
recognition?), without having some clue to what's missing.
What does samba need in a configuration like this to do its
job?

Thanks for any advice.

I wrote:

> I have a samba server at ip address
> 	aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd
> 
> I can connect to it from clients on subnets aaa.bbb.eee. and
> aaa.bbb.fff.
> 
> I can't connect to it from clients on ggg.hhh.
> 
> smb.conf has
> 	hosts deny = all
> 	hosts allow = localhost, aaa.bbb., ggg.hhh.
> 
> The client can successfully 'ping mysambaserver' (resolves to
> aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd).  Doing 'net view \\mysambaserver' fails with
> 'network path not found', and coincident with this the following
> error message appears in mysambaserver's log.smb:
> 	Gethostbyaddr failed for ggg.hhh.kkk.lll
> This is different from the client's address of ggg.hhh.iii.jjj
> 
> Note that clients on ggg.hhh. connect quite gracefully to
> native nt shares on aaa.bbb.
>...

     Frank R.Brown
     Frank.R.Brown at MailAndNews