Windows 98 + domain logons

[Svein Roar Nilsen]

Hi!

One last try before ditching Samba and buying Windows 2000 Server... 

Server: RedHat 7.0 with Samba 2.0.7, set up as PDC to be able to run logon
scripts. 

PC's: Norwegian Windows 98 with all the stuff from windowsupdate (including
explorer 5.5)

Every morning, all our Windows 98 users (we have about 20 of them) have to log
on multiple times, usually between 2 and 5, before being able to log on to our
domain. They get an error message saying something about not being able to
contact the domain controller. But when they finally are able to log on,
everything works very well untill the next morning. Our Windows NT 4.0 users are
able to log on just fine every time they try. 

In the log.pcNN logfiles, we get the following 3 lines for every attempt:

[2000/11/27 09:45:01, 0] lib/util_sock.c:write_socket_data(540)
  write_socket_data: write failure. Error = Broken pipe
[2000/11/27 09:45:01, 0] lib/util_sock.c:write_socket(566)
  write_socket: Error writing 4 bytes to socket 6: ERRNO = Broken pipe
[2000/11/27 09:45:01, 0] lib/util_sock.c:send_smb(754)
  Error writing 4 bytes to client. -1. Exiting

But even worse: If the server is restarted while all workstations are off, it
takes exactly 3 hours from the first workstation is back on until people are
able to log on again. (Again, except for our NT users...) So I just have to tell
them: "wait until lunch time, then everything will be OK!" And during these 3
hours, it is not possible to view any network information from any Windows 98
machine. "net view" gives a message about not finding the machine controlling
shared resources or something like that (freely translated from Norwegian),
while "smbclient -L pc07" works just fine and also shows all our workgroups with
masterbrowsers, and everything looks just fine.  

It has not always been like that. The problem first turned up in an earlier
version of Samba. I think when we upgraded to 2.0.6 or maybe 2.0.5, and has been
there ever since. 

I have tried to change nearly every parameter in smb.conf, but nothing seems to
help. So I should be really grateful if someone is able to help! I have also
searched the internet, and it seems that there are other people having similar
problems, but I have never seen anybody providing an answear that works for us. 

(btw: has anyone tested 2.2-alpha1? Is it stable enough to cause less problems
than the version we are running? :)


Svein Roar Nilsen