too many elections happening on my local subnet?

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Sun, 7 Sep 1997, Kerry Hoath wrote:

> Hi. I have a few Linux boxes running samba 1.9.17 on my local subnet here
> at home. I have configured one machine (gotss1) as the local master
> browser, i.e.
> preferred master=yes
> os level=33
> 
> The other machines on the subnet have:
> os level=0
> preferred master=no
> 
> For some reason yet to be determined an election takes place every 12
> minutes or so, and gotss1 becomes the master browser again. I am using no
> wins server, and unless it is necessary I have no desire to use a wins
> server on my local subnet wich only has 9 machines, all Linux boxes.
> These elections every 12 minutes add lines to my syslog and generate
> broadcast traffic. Is this normal? the logs below show invalid election
> packets coming from gots1,

? you sure?  have a look at the packet format in:
ftp.microsoft.com/developr/drg/cifs/browrev.txt

i think you mean that samba is "unnecessarily" sending out election
packets, or "invalidly" sending out election packets, rather than sending 
out "invalid election packets".

> however setting local master=no on the other
> machines seems to stop the rogue elections from taking place. I did not
> think this was neccary, and a want a setup where other machines can become
> a master browser _only_ if gotss1 is down. Logs below. Any ideas what I am
> doing wrong? This never used to happen with 1.9.16p11,.


this _could_ get complicated.

ok, you have only linux boxes.  therefore, if there's something going 
wrong, it's a samba issue, not a w95.  interesting setup!

hm.  every 12 minutes.  if it were every 5 minutes, i would say that 
there's something going wrong with the "check for master browser" system...

eek!  there is.  have a look at nameelect.c::check_master_browser().  it 
says, in the workgroup lists, if you're not already a master browser for 
your workgroup, and we can possibly _be_ a local master browser, then it 
concludes that it really _ought_ to be a local master, and calls 
browser_gone().

this should read: 

   {
      if (lp_local_master() && !lp_preferred_master())
      { 
         browser_gone()
      }
      else
      {
         ...
      }
   }

luke