Mapped drives but server invisible from clients

[John E. Malmberg]

Alder <ue191 at victoria.tc.canada> wrote:
> Subject: Re: **Fwd: Mapped drives but server invisible from clients
> 
> Sorry if my last post wasn't readable because of the digital signature. 
>  It should be gone now.
> 
> I'm setting up Samba 2.0.6 on VMS 7.2 Alpha to share out files only (no 
> printers) to two Windows clients on a peer-to-peer, 10base2 home LAN. 
>  For the most part, things work pretty well, but I would like to iron 
> out some wrinkles I'm running across with the smbclient tool and 
> browsing shares from the clients.
> 
> The LAN hosts are named and addressed as follows:
> 
> SZEGED  [192.168.0.3] - Samba-VMS server
> ISZKAZ   [192.168.0.2] - Windows 2000 (print server)
> KIRALY [192.168.0.1] - Windows ME (Internet Connection Sharing server 
> and LAN gateway to the Internet)

SAMBA 2.0.6 (all platforms) has problems with Windows clients later than 
Windows NT 4 or Windows 98.

There are incompatabilities in the protocol.  Some of these are 
addressed with SAMBA 2.0.7, and some in SAMBA 2.2.x.

There have been postings that SAMBA 2.2.4 has been ported to OpenVMS on 
this list and on comp.os.vms, but neither the poster or anyone else has 
revealed anything more than a download URL.

You may or may not be seeing symptoms of this.

> All hosts have a HOSTS file with entries for the other hosts on the LAN 
> and the two Windows clients use NetBEUI for Windows file and print 
> sharing.  The KIRALY machine, because it is the ICS server, has an 
> internal ADSL modem which serves as a NAT router.  For that reason too, 
> it has a second IP address dynamically allocated by my ISP.  I also run 
> Nortel Networks VPN client on it so it has, from time-to-time, a third 
> IP address.  KIRALY runs ZoneAlarm Free and has the entire LAN in its 
> Local Zone, i.e. the range of addresses 192.168.0.1 - 192.168.0.255

A host file is used locally only.  Samba uses NMBD to resolve the names.

I am a bit rusty on this, as I have not set up my SAMBA build setup 
since my relocation, but will try to describe what is going on.

NMBD pretends it is a WINS server.

A LANMAN client has several ways of resolving a host.

1. The local lmhost file. (This is not the host file)
2. Querying a WINS server.
3. A broadcast query.
4. The local host file.
5. The DNS.

SAMBA does not have a local lmhost file.  So the clients should use it 
as a WINS server, or SAMBA should be configured to use a designated WINS 
server.

Note that LANMAN protocol searches LMHOST, the WINS server next, and 
then optionally the host.dat and then the DNS.

The traditional TCP/IP services search the host.dat, the DNS, and then 
the WINS server.

>  From SZEGED I run the following smbclient query and get the 3 lines 
> following that in response:
> $ smbclient "-L" kiraly "-U" username%password
> 
> added interface ip=192.168.0.3 bcast=192.168.0.255 nmask=255.255.255.0
> session request to KIRALY failed (Not listening on called name)
> session request to *SMBSERVER failed (Called name not present)

That could be that that kiraly is not registered with NMBD, and is not 
responding in time to a broadcast query.

> But, if I run this:
> $ smbclient "-L" kiraly "-I" 66.183.253.215 "-U" username%password
> 
> ...the result is this:
> added interface ip=192.168.0.3 bcast=192.168.0.255 nmask=255.255.255.0
[working display snipped]

> So I guess I have two questions to start with.  Why does the first 
> SMBCLIENT query fail to find the correct name, while the second query 
> does, even though it not using the IP address specified for that name in 
> the HOSTS file?

I am not sure that SMBCLIENT will use the host file equivalent for 
OpenVMS unless you give it a fully qualified domain name.  Other causes 
were previously mentioned.

> Second question is: Shouldn't I be seeing something under Server/Comment 
> and Workgroup/Master?

I am not sure.

> Working from the Windows clients now, I run a simple NET VIEW and get a 
> list of only two servers: KIRALY and ISZKAZ.  The Smaba server does not 
> appear.  Running "NET VIEW \\SZEGED" I get "Error 53: The computer name 
> specified in the network path cannot be located...."

Usually this indicates that the SAMBA__GUEST account either does not 
exist or does not have access to the SAMBA_ROOT:[VAR] directory.

Or it could be a protocol incompatability error.

You could try increasing the "Debuglevel" parameter as mentioned in the 
SAMBA documentation.

> Can anyone help sort out one or more of these problems ?  I'd appreciate it.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.network
Personal Opinion Only