Samba disappearing from the network

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Mon, 6 Oct 1997 infinity at gamersinn.com wrote:

> 
> I'm at a complete loss as to why, but 'dns proxy = no' did seem to fix the
> problem. Thanks for your help :)

oops!  i didn't see that you said it _did_ fix the problem.  oops!


ok, the reason why is because you have some machines with different 
NetBIOS names from their DNS names.  samba treats names it can't find to 
a gethostbyname() call, blocking the entire nmbd process until this call 
returns.

this call, on your system, is taking up to thirty seconds to time-out, 
presumably because it's contacting your DNS server, which is going out 
and lookup up the DNS name externally, which takes time etc etc, and 
eventually comes back "sorry, DNS name WORKGROUP.gamersinn.com" could not 
be found.

so, do one of the following:

1) use dns proxy = no

2) fix your clients so that they have proper matches of DNS and NetBIOS 
   names.  typically, people will put their username in the DNS box, and the
   host name in the NetBIOS box.  or sometimes the other way round.  it 
   depends on who did the installation, and whether people have been pissing
   with the tcp/ip settings on the w95 box.

3) fix your DNS server arrangement

4) put dual entries in your DNS tables: one for the NetBIOS name; the other
   with the DNS name, for each w95 client.

5) fix samba so that it can do a non-blocking gethostbyname() call: more 
   complicated than you might think (involves having a queue of pending 
   gethostbyname() calls, and a higher-order function / state-based callback
   arrangement to be able to answer the original query once the gethostbyname
   call is resolved.


<a href="mailto:lkcl at switchboard.net"  > Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton </a>
<a href="http://mailhost.cb1.com/~lkcl"> Lynx2.7-friendly Home Page   </a>
<br><b>  "Apply the Laws of Nature to your environment before your
          environment applies the Laws of Nature to you"              </b>