Syncing WINS

Mon Jan 28 11:06:04 GMT 2002

Welcome.  'Tis what the list if for. :)

|2nd.  Are you implying that WINS can span multiple subnets?  I thought
|that NetBIOS in general was incapable of spanning subnets, based on the
|broadcasting restrictions.

WINS by itself doesn't care about subnets.  Clients are told the IP of
the WINS server and they speak to that IP.  End of story.  Of course
this may only work for NetBIOS over TCP/IP scenarios, but I don't know
the guts of WINS & how it may or may not work over other protocols.

NetBIOS, yes, generally has this subnet limitation because of it's
(rather annoying) desire to broadcast.  This limitation goes away over
TCP/IP;  broadcast is only one of 4 different methods that Samba can use
for finding out which NetBIOS name belongs to which machine.  Broadcast
is also the least desirable of the four (because it's very noisy on the
network).  You may recall from the smb.conf the global parameter:

name resolve order

which should typically be set to:

wins lmhosts host bcast

Notice bcast is last & wins is first because it is definately the most
preferred method.  From the swat help:

-----
lmhosts : Lookup an IP address in the Samba lmhosts file. If the line in
lmhosts has no name type attached to the NetBIOS name (see the
lmhosts(5) for details) then any name type matches for lookup.

host : Do a standard host name to IP address resolution, using the
system /etc/hosts , NIS, or DNS lookups. This method of name resolution
is operating system depended for instance on IRIX or Solaris this may be
controlled by the /etc/nsswitch.conf file). Note that this method is
only used if the NetBIOS name type being queried is the 0x20 (server)
name type, otherwise it is ignored.

wins : Query a name with the IP address listed in the wins server
parameter. If no WINS server has been specified this method will be
ignored.

bcast : Do a broadcast on each of the known local interfaces listed in
the interfaces parameter. This is the least reliable of the name
resolution methods as it depends on the target host being on a locally
connected subnet.

Default: name resolve order = lmhosts host wins bcast
-----

Again you'd want to use WINS for the same reason you'd want to use DNS
before /etc/hosts.

Now as far as the cross subnet browsing is concerned, if you have all
clients pointing to the same WINS box you don't need to do the "remote
browse sync" jazz.  In fact you could easily wind up polluting the
master browse list with "ghost" entries and the like.  What you will
need however is a master browser (a samba box preferred) for each
subnet, and that master browser box will have to be pointed at your WINS
box (via "wins server = IP" parameter in smb.conf).

If I am not mistaken there is a blurb in the documentation *somewhere*
about "if you want cross-subnet browsing to work, you must use a WINS
server" etc etc etc.  If I can find a pointer to that doc I'll send you
a note.

kw

|That's why I thought I needed 2 WINS servers.
|
|-Rob
|
|
|> |From: samba-admin at lists.samba.org
|> |[mailto:samba-admin at lists.samba.org]On
|> |Behalf Of Robert Dege
|> |Sent: 25 January 2002, Friday 14:56
|> |To: samba at lists.samba.org
|> |Subject: Syncing WINS
|>
|> [snip]
|>
|> |
|> |I have 2 subnets: 172.28.x.x & 192.168.100.X  The 2 subnets are
|> |connected via a VPN, so there are no blocked ports that I'm
|aware of.
|> |
|> |I have a Samba WINS Server on each subnet, and want to sync them
|> |together so that everybody can see everybody else.  Is this
|> |possible via
|> |remote browse sync?
|>
|> If you use samba as a WINS server, you should have one and only one.
|> Otherwise you will create havoc everywhere on your net.
|>
|> remote browse sync deals with syncing browse lists and nothing more.
|> The correct way to do this, I believe (as it's worked for me), is to
|> point ALL smb clients (windows & samba alike) to your singular samba
|> WINS server.  Then everyone should be happy.
|>
|--
|
|-Rob
|
|