browsing mystery....

[Anthony Brock]

Thank you for the information. I was aware of the WINS file, and the 
servers have always appeared to be correctly entered (with IP address, 
etc). However, the clients can never find the machines (Win95, Win98, 
WinME, WinNT, and Win2000) on certain subnets even though their network 
configurations confirm WINS servers located at the correct IP address.

It is simply baffling. What is even more strange is the effect of a reboot 
on the WINS server. Even though the cache is intact and (at least to my 
understanding) appears to be correct, NOTHING can be found for 1 to 4 hours 
after a reboot! Needless to say, I try hard to never reboot the server *sigh*.

Thanks for the information!

Tony

At 03:56 PM 11/26/2001 -0800, vorlon at netexpress.net wrote:
>Anthony,
>
>FWIW, up to and including Samba 2.2.1a (the most recent Samba I've had
>running as a WINS server), all WINS registrations are stored on-disk in
>a file called `wins.dat' in a directory that's configured at compile
>time (on my Linux systems, it's /var/state/samba/).  Checking whether a
>machine is registered with the WINS server is relatively simple: either
>the machine name appears in this file, or it doesn't.
>
> >> 2) diagnosing how to determine WHAT information it is registering,
>
>For this, it's important to understand netbios type codes (the last byte
>of the 16-byte netbios name).  I don't have a complete list of these,
>nor a pointer to such a list -- but I believe these are documented on
>the web in some fashion.
>
>Cheers,
>Steve Langasek
>postmodern programmer

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