Browsing via dial-in

[Bill Eldridge]

I'm running Samba 18p7, with pppd & smb_pam
to let me use NT passwords for my Unix dial-in
accounts.   Login goes fine, internet IP stuff
works fine (like e-mail & Web), I can mount
shares by name, but Windows Explorer browsing
comes and goes.  Even when it's working, browsing
only starts up about 20 seconds or so after
logon - before that I get "unable to browse
network" errors.  I've had configurations that
worked, and then I reboot and they don't work
again.  But mounting shares with Tools/Map
\\somemachine\someshare always works, as does
IP socket stuff. PDC is an NT 4.0 machine, dial-in is
RH 5.0.

Things I've tried in smb.conf include:

WINS server & proxy, WINS client & proxy,
/etc/lmhosts file, domain logons, DNS proxy.
The dialin server is never Master browser,
never domain controller.

Things I've tried on the client include:

WINS client with dialin server address
No WINS.  lmhosts file with dialin server
as PDC & browse (G) host, the NT PDC as
PDC & browse host, no entries in lmhosts.

Any ideas on a reasonable way to set this
up so it works consistently?  I was trying
to stick to centralized server configs,
trying to avoid any Win client lmhost files,
with at most a WINS & use NetBIOS over TCP/IP
change, but at this point I'm willing to cash
in for something that works consistently every
time.

Thanks,
Bill


--
Bill Eldridge
Radio Free Asia
bill at rfa.org