Samba and DHCP

[Peter Samuelson]

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[Ed Sanborn <ed.sanborn at alcatel.com>]
> I recently changed an NT client from a static IP address to a DHCP
> address in a new subnet.  Now I cannot reach all 3 Samba servers that
> I have.  Any idea why?

`ping' is a wonderful network diagnostic tool.  Can you ping your
servers, by IP address?  If not, you have network routing problems.  If 
so, you should be able to work something out.

> One clue I have is that the machine is now not visible via DNS as it
> has been fed a dynamic address.  Do I need to use Dynamic DNS for
> this to work?

DNS is mostly irrelevant to SMB.  To locate each other, hosts use
either an "lmhosts" file, or NetBIOS name service (NBNS, aka WINS), or
broadcast.

If your clients are in a different broadcast domain (i.e. a broadcast
packet does not reach one from the other), you will have to use either
lmhosts or NBNS.  I suggest the latter.  If you are not already doing
so, designate one of your Samba servers as the NBNS server in smb.conf:

  wins support = true

In your other Samba servers, use

  wins support = false
  wins server = ip.of.NBNS.server

In your DHCP configuration, tell the clients about this state of
affairs.  Assuming you use the ISC dhcpd, put this in dhcpd.conf:

  # Win95 bug: must have two NBNS servers.  Put the one in twice.
  option netbios-name-servers ip.of.NBNS.server ip.of.NBNS.server;
  option netbios-node-type 8;

Peter