Some help with broadcasts through a Linux system

Dan Kaminsky effugas at best.com
Wed Feb 3 09:11:54 GMT 1999


>The linux box is running a 2.0.36 kernel.
>
>It seems that Linux feels that it should not have to forward the broadcast
>datagrams.
>
>Does anyone have any clues?

Richard--

    In the same boat you are--been here for the past few months.  Here's the
scoop:

    Linux cannot forward broadcasts--this violates the rules of subnets or
some garbage like that.  There's nothing, for instance, like the UDPHELPer
of some of 3Com routers.

    The "Samba" solution is for all client machines to contact the WINS
server and then for inter-subnet browsing to occur.

    Not the greatest solution when you don't have *access* to the other
machines, which are stuck on using NetBIOS Broadcasts.

    There's already something in place for a WINS Proxy, which according to
the conf:

# WINS Proxy - Tells Samba to answer name resolution queries on
# behalf of a non WINS capable client, for this to work there must be
# at least one  WINS Server on the network. The default is NO.

    What we don't have, as far as I can tell, is a way to answer name
resolution queries for a WINS client who can't hear the broadcasts that the
Samba server can.

    The WINS server actually *does* give you a list of workgroups, mind you.
But the Windows client tries to access the workgroups via the broadcast
method, and since (obviously) the Windows client isn't on the same broadcast
address as the workgroups that the WINS server is claiming exist, an error
pops up.

    I've been working on a solution.  No, it's not as easy as just setting
the server :-)



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