samba & clients on 2 subnets

[Pavel Bocek]

>I have samba ver. 1.9.16p setup on a Solaris 2.5.1 server

>I have tested our smb.conf file and it appears to work correctly.  
>I have NT Workstation 4.0 and Windows 95 clients on 2 subnets.

>Samba server on 128.143.10 subnet (128.143.10.94)
>NT and 95 PCS on 128.143.10 and 128.143.57 subnets

> The 10clients always work correctly.  The 57clients sometimes 
> (rarely) work fine (fine = see all the clients on the both 10 and 57 
> subnets and see samba server).  Most of the time however, the 
> 57clients only see other 57clients.  On all the 57 clients I have 
> configured the WINS server to show the ip address of the samba 
> server.  In our smb.conf we have the global setting "hosts allow 
> 128.143.10./255.255.255.0, 128.143.57./255.255.255.0"  and "remote 
> announce = 128.143.10.94"

>I think it might have something to do with the "interface" option. I
> read that "if this option is not set then Samba will attempt to find 
> primary interface, but won't attempt to configure more than one
> interface."  
> I don't have the "interface" option set and when I run
> "nmblookup" routines I see that Samba is choosing my Samba server as
> the "primary interface"  so it shows 128.143.10.94 (samba server) 
> and a broadcast address of 128.143.10.255 so it only broadcasts to 
> clients on the 10 subnet?!?  (for example nmblookup -d 2 '*' only 
> returns responses from clients on the 10 subnet because it shows it 
> added an interface of 128.143.10.94, broadcast of 128.143.10.255, 
> and subnet of 255.255.255.0) or is it that we are using the "remote 
> announce" option incorrectly and it shouldbe "remote announce = 
> 128.143.10.255, 128.143.57.255" ? Any ideas on why I sometimes work 
> correctly on 57clients but most of the time don't?

The "interface" option is useful only if your Samba server has more
than one network interface, i.e. Samba is directly connected to 2
subnets. 
Using "remote announce" is not a good idea. Configure Samba as 
DOMAIN MASTER and browsing should work. For details see BROWSING.TXT 
in the latest samba distribution.

Regards.
Pavel