Problem, possibly new for 2.2.0, with lmhosts

[David Collier-Brown]

Steve Langasek wrote:

> Everything that uses netbios name service looks at 'name resolve order', just
> as everything that uses name service looks at /etc/nsswitch.conf.  But just as
> bind doesn't look at nsswitch to find out where it should get its DNS
> information, nmbd doesn't look at 'name resolve order' because it's the server
> /providing/ the netbios information, not a client consuming it.

	Ok, then I'm going to argue that it's **definitely** 
	a bug (;-)). I'm merely unsure whether it's 
	a) the absence of a server-side "name resolve order"
	   option, or
	b) the limiting of the existing option to the client
	   side.

	As Steve has pointed out, 
> Everything that uses netbios name service looks at 'name resolve order',
just
as everything that uses name service looks at /etc/nsswitch.conf.  But
just
as
bind doesn't look at nsswitch to find out where it should get its DNS
information, [snip]

	And nsswitch.conf is an option, at the system level, that
	dictates how the services will be provided to all its clients.
	It is limited to a particular machine, but applies to all
	(client) programs using that service/server.

	Therefor it is logical to provide a similar mechanism
	for the Samba server, specifically for the WINS and 
	older name services, dictating where on the local
	machine it looks for the information which is to be 
	supplied.

	I'm inclined to agree that any files used to add data
	to the name service should be different from the 
	client-side lmhosts file, and will extend the argument
	slightly to say that deciding to use dns should be
	separate from deciding to use such a file, as is now the
	case with the dns proxy option.

	Perhaps the best thing is to have an option to select
	a wins name resolve order, and limit it to files, 
	in-memory wins tables, dns and very very optionally
	other wins servers and broadcast.

	This is not a high-priority issue, as we can kludge it
	using dns proxy and injecting the PC names into the
	/etc/hosts file: this allows the machines to be seen	
	as type <20>s...

	Anyone looking for a patch to write?

--dave (dinosaur programmer & multician) c-b
-- 
David Collier-Brown,           | Always do right. This will gratify 
Performance & Engineering Team | some people and astonish the rest.
Americas Customer Engineering  |                      -- Mark Twain
(905) 415-2849                 | davecb at canada.sun.com