problems with nmbd and two network interfaces (PR#1954)

Andrew Tridgell samba-bugs at samba.anu.edu.au
Sat Nov 22 03:51:17 GMT 1997


> smb.conf:
> 
> [global]
>    interfaces = 10.10.10.10/24
>    socket address = 10.10.10.10
> 
> smb2.conf:
> 
> [global]
>    interfaces = 10.10.11.10/24
>    socket address = 10.10.11.10
>    netbios name = SAMBA2

I really wish I'd never put the socket address option in! It was intended
for highly specialised uses, not for this sort of thing.

If you do the above you will get a disaster. The socket address option
will prevent nmbd from seeing broadcasts, so you will end up with elections
going mad as nmbd sends election requests but never sees the responses.

Samba does not support using a separate netbios name on each interface.
Trying to hack it up via socket address will cause you lots of problems.
We might support separate netbios names on each interface in future
but in the meantime you will need to use a different technique.

If your aim is load-balancing (pointing clients at the local interface name)
then this is achieved through two methods:

1) Samba already responds to name queries by replying with the IP address
of the interface that the query came from, as long as you have the "interfaces"
option set correctly.

2) When you are using a external WINS server (maybe a NT box on another LAN) 
and are running Samba as a WINS client then Samba currently registers only 
the one IP with that WINS server. This makes load balancing with a remote
WINS server tricky! Jeremy has fixed this in his ongoing nmbd rewrite so
that Samba correctly registers multiple interface addresses with the WINS
server, thus making load balancing work totally transparently. This new
code will be in a future release (or if you are _really_ keen and feeling
very brave then you could get it via anonymous CVS now).

Cheers, Andrew



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