browsing mystery....

[Anthony Brock]

I don't know if it's actually rare, or if most people rely of Windows OS 
for WINS when Samba fails. We have been attempting to use Samba with WINS 
for several years, and have encountered erratic/difficult to diagnose 
problems the entire time it has been installed. Perhaps 40% of our networks 
don't have a problem, about 10% of our networks function properly 
"occasionally", and the remainder have NEVER worked.

This has been persistent from version 2.0.0 through 2.2.2. Unfortunately, 
there is almost no assistance available to help with:

1) properly diagnosing if a machine is properly registered,
2) diagnosing how to determine WHAT information it is registering,
3) diagnosing how to pull the information from the WINS server using 
Samba's utilities,
4) a step-by-step guide for what SHOULD be seen and how to fix common problems,
5) and what to do when nothing else seems to be working (i.e., a 
step-by-step guide to using tcpdump, etc).

In my case, I have given up (after about 10 posts over 3 years asking for 
help and no responses which actually help, other than "read diagnose.txt" 
which has NOTHING that helps with this problem). I live with hard-coding IP 
addresses as they seem to function when WINS fails. Other than WINS, Samba 
seems to work great. However, I don't believe they have ever actually 
gotten this properly functioning.

Good luck!

Tony

At 03:45 PM 11/26/2001 -0800, stoffer at billen.dk wrote:
>Hi, Sebastian
>Thanks for your response, I'm also trying to solve the problem...
>Anyway, it's nice to hear I'm not alone.....hehe
>I just can't understand why this problem apparently is so rare....
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Sebastian Trahm" <Sebastian.Trahm at alcatel.de>
>To: <stoffer at billen.dk>
>Cc: <samba-ntdom at lists.samba.org>
>Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2001 11:14 AM
>Subject: AW: browsing mystery....
>
>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> no, we couldn't solve the problem 'til today. Our workgroup was build up
>on
> >> three subnetworks, for every subnetwork we configured a
>local-master-browser
> >> and one subnetwork had the domain-master-browser. After a time we were
> >> able to see all the host from the "other  side" within our "whole"
>workgroup, but trying
> >> to connect to them failed with an error message, that the requested host
>couldn't
> >> be found. We paused the trial & error method; now going to test only
> >with
>two
> >> subnets, simple routing between, trying another OS;
> >>
> >> If i get any further results on it, you will here from me, the only
>problem is the effort of time.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> take care,
> >>
> >> Sebastian
> >> inthisdefiance at gmx.net
> >> sebastian.trahm at alcatel.de
> >>
> >>
> >>

******************************************************************************
* Anthony Brock                                         abrock at georgefox.edu *
* Director of Network Services                         George Fox University *
******************************************************************************