Running smb without nmb? (Linux Suse 8.1 feature)

Boyce, Nick nick.boyce at eds.com
Mon Oct 28 18:11:02 GMT 2002


[sorry - bit of a belated reply - I have a bit of a backlog to read]

On 23rd.Oct.2002, Linda Walsh asked :

> I recently upgraded my Linux distro to SuSE 8.1 which
> came w/samba 2.2.5.
> 
> A feature of the upgrade was that it 'split' the startup
> script for samba from 1 script for _smb_ & _nmb_ to 2 scripts.
> 
> So how/why would splitting these scripts be a good thing? 

I can think of one good reason why a sysadmin might want to *re*start nmb
without restarting smb - loss of WINS registration.

For us, that happens periodically to the registration of our Samba boxen
with our corporate Windows WINS servers, and  I _think_ the underlying cause
is that the WINS servers get rebooted.  The first we notice is that calls
start coming in from people who can no longer map network drives to the
Sambas, or can no longer contact development webservers on the same boxes by
NetBIOS name alone.  A simple restart of nmb solves the problem, and
restarting smb at the same time would be both unnecessary and undesirable.

Nick Boyce
EDS Southwest Solution Centre, Bristol, UK



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