Hosts disappearing from browser list

[Karl Royer]

Since upgrading our samba servers on all our Unix machines
(Solaris 2.5.1 and 2.6 an Sun Servers) to versions 1.9.17p2 and p4
we observe the "Hosts disappearing from browser list" problem.

In patch level 2 (1.9.17p2) an error was logged in the log.nmb file,
"WINS server did not respond to name registration!"

When samba is first started the Hosts are browseable on 95 and NT,
but after a period of time they dissapear from our WINS server.
If nmbd is restarted they temporarily reappear.

The setup is as follows,

>workgroup = SANDWICH-CR
>domain controller = san-dom-02
>os level = 0
>preferred master = no
>wins support = no
>wins proxy = yes
>wins server = san-dom-07
>local master = no
>server string = CR Sandwich Workstation (%h) (Samba %v)
>username map = /etc/samba/username.map
>password server = san-dom-02
>password level = 2
>security = server
>default service = homes
>netbios name    = maxwell
>browseable = yes


This problem has been observed by other people,

>From:   Pat Allen <pat at mbari143.mbari.org>
>To:     "'samba at samba.anu.edu.au'" <samba at samba.anu.edu.au>
>Subject: Hosts disappearing from browser list
>Date:   Tue, 18 Nov 1997 14:46:48 -0800
>
>Hi everyone,
>
>I'm scratching my head on this one. I'm running 1.9.17p2 on several
>HP-UX 10.2 systems. Everything works great when samba is first started.
>The systems show up in the browser as you would expect them to. Over the
>course of time, they disappear from the browser window. You can still
>get to them via the Find Computer option but not through the browser.
>I've got 
>socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_KEEPALIVE
>
>I've even tried setting the keep alive value to 60 to see if that would
>help. But no luck....
>
>Killing the samba processes and restarting them will succeed in getting
>the server back into the browser list. Does anyone have any >suggestions?
>THANKS!


And....

>Date:   Thu, 13 Nov 1997 16:07:09 +0100
>From:   Rainer Hauck <hauck at informatik.uni-muenchen.de>
>To:     samba at samba.anu.edu.au
>Subject: Server disappearing from Browselist
>
>Hi,
>
>I recently installed 1.9.17p4 (updated from 1.9.17(p0)). It helped me
>solve a few problems I didn't expect but it somehow broke my nmbd:
>
>Every now and then my Samba-Server disappears from the Browselist. The
>only way to get him on the Browselist again is to restart nmbd.
>
>Anyone else seen this?
>
>Any hints to get around it (apart from going back to 1.9.17p0)??
>
>Thanks and Bye,
>
>Rainer Hauck


I tried 1.9.17p0 and it was okay, so the break was moving to p2. The
negative response fix in p4 removes the "WINS server not respond..."
warning message, but we still have non-browseable servers.

Can anyone help ???

			Karl William Royer.