Cross-Subnet-Browsing
Richard Sharpe
rsharpe at ns.aus.com
Mon Apr 15 10:30:12 GMT 2002
On Mon, 15 Apr 2002, [iso-8859-15] Jürgen Appel wrote:
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> Hi!
>
> Here at Göttingen University we networked all dormitories and build up
> a large samba-network.
>
> Our WINs server is a linux machine running samba. Also in each dormitoriy
> (=each subnet) there is a SAMBA machine running as DMB
> (and most time also as LMB).
>
> Two issues came up be solved, which needed modification of samba code:
>
> a)
> First we encountered the problem of never disappering ghost-workgroups
> described in man smb.conf which was solved by the introducion of the new
> "enhanced browsing" option. This option disables transfering the list of
> workgroups from one DMB to another (without ever making them invalid
> by e.g. a TTL counter).
>
> But setting enhanced browsing = True also made the DMBs stop looking
> for other workgroups by resolving *#1b via the WINS server. So what was
> needed was the possibility to partly disable enhanced browsing so that
> only the call to "sync_all_dmbs" would be avoided.
>
> The appended patch does this for us by making it possible to set
> enhanced browsing= Partly
>
> This patch is necessary for each DMB.
>
> b)
> Also we noticed that it is very comfortable to browse the "Network
> Neighborhood" by linux programs like the (KDE-) konqueror which
> make use of libsmb.
>
> But when looking up a master browser for a workgroup WORKGROUP
> to get the names of all computers within that workgroup libsmb only
> searches for WORKGROUP#1d (the LMB-group-tag) and only in its own
> subnet, because there are no WORKGROUP#1d-entries in the WINS-database.
>
> If, like in our case, there are not LMBs of every workgroup in every subnet, these
> searches will sometimes fail. So I made libsmb first look whether there is a DMB
> for the workgroup in question (lookup WORKGROUP#1B via WINS e.g.).
> If there is, ask this host about its workgroup members, else try the conventional
> way by finding a LMB for WORKGROUP without WINS.
>
> This made it possible to browse even workgroups which don't have a LMB in my subnet.
> This change is necessary for everyone who wants to browse the etwork neighborhood comfortably.
>
>
>
> Maybe someone finds these changes worthy and enters them to the samba CVS tree.
I will apply the libsmbclient portion of this patch today. It looks like
an obvious improvement. I will probably checlk the LMB first and then the
DMB.
Regards
-----
Richard Sharpe, rsharpe at ns.aus.com, rsharpe at samba.org,
sharpe at ethereal.com
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