[Samba] Re: WINS over subnets

[Edmundo Valle Neto]

Hoggins! escreveu:
> Edmundo Valle Neto a écrit :
>> Hoggins! escreveu:
>>
>>    Take a look at the chapter of the samba book about cross-subnet 
>> browsing, who maintains the browse list is the domain master browser, 
>> each subnet must have a local master browser to maintain the browse  
>> list for its own network segment and it will sync the list with the 
>> domain master browser of the network. In browse.dat only should 
>> appear machines that have some service to offer to the network.
> Almost all the machines of my network offer services (shares), so it's 
> not the problem.
> Since then, the server should maintain a more complete list : the 
> clients successfully register to it.
> I must not have understood the behavior of Samba, because I believed 
> you just had to have one WINS server to which all the clients 
> register, so it would maintain a browse list of these clients. I 
> cannot have "slave" servers on the other subnets, that's why I planned 
> on using one single master server for all the subnets.

Yes, in that case it should maintain a more complete list. And yes you 
just must have ONE WINS server.
I think you didnt got the point, domain master, local master, domain 
controllers, wins server, etc are just roles of the same server, 
enabling some options in smb.conf the same server can be all of them at 
the same time.
BUT, other subnets need local master browsers too, they can be any 
Windows workstation (normally you should not worry about that), this is 
one of the reasons that all of them must use the same single WINS server 
(I am not saying that yours are not), the LMB can be any available 
workstation (the machines in the subnet should elect one automatically), 
so any machine ending up beeing a LMB will use the  same WINS server to 
find the DMB and sync. It works that way without you needing to care 
about it.

>>    What is the behavior of your network? Each network only shows its 
>> own machines? i.e. Wireless clients only sees each others and samba 
>> only sees one XP machine? Wireless clients cannot see the samba 
>> server at all?
> I did not check all the behaviors, but according to what I saw, the 
> wireless clients can see each other (thanks to broadcast), but cannot 
> see the XP box. I must make more checks, since I don't even know if 
> they can see the server. I must admit that I was more preoccupied by 
> the browse.dat list, and my own XP box.

Ok, if the wireless clients can see each others probably that segment 
has an LMB with the browse list of that segment but just isnt passing it 
to the samba server.
About the LMBs I just said that to make it clear, that the other 
networks dont register themselves directly with samba to be included in 
the browse.dat file, who does that is the LMB of that segment (as 
explained before).

>>
>>
>> Wins not only holds the IP address but the roles that these addresses 
>> have in the network.
>> Like: "WORKGROUP#1b" ... 1b = Domain Master Browser, and WINS clients 
>> access this information to know where they shoul authenticate, sync 
>> their browse lists, etc.
> The WINS file looks fine to me, and all these infos appear, and all 
> the machines and their services also appear.

ok.

>>
>> Theres some options to force syncs and announces to other networks 
>> too, but I never needed to use them, even in that type of situation 
>> with cross-subnets.
> Yes, maybe because you have several local master browsers that sync to 
> the domain master browser, so these options would be redundant. 
> Anyway, these syncs won't even work, since they rely on broadcast 
> transmissions.
>

Look at was explained above, and about these options I just cited them 
to say that them exists.

>
> Thanks for the help, I'm getting desperate, though I thought it was 
> possible to maintain such a list with only ONE server if the routes 
> and the server's configuration files were correctly set.
>

Yes, it is possible and most of the times the recommended way.


Theres some tools and comands to see problems with name resolution on 
the XP clients, like nbtstat or the netbios browsing console.

Putting a log level of 2 in smb.conf, is there any interesting 
information about elections in the nmbd log? Whould help if you include 
your smb.conf here too.


Regards.

Edmundo Valle Neto