Can only see 1 SMB Server

[Stephen L Arnold]

On 4 Jul 99, "Casey Bralla" <LinuxList at NerdWorld.org> had questions 
about Can only see 1 SMB Server:  

> I'm trying to run 2 SMB servers on my intranet (which also has a
> Win98 client).  Both are accessable if I explicitly link to them.
> (ie: "NET USE" commands work just fine), but neither apear on a
> browse list if both of them are running.  If only  1 is running,
> it appears just fine. 
> 
> I've mucked around with the "domain master" & "local master"
> parameters, to no avail.  (I don't really understand them
> anyway.)  Can anybody offer a suggestion of where to continue my
> investigation? 

For a small network (ie, a single workgroup) the domain defaults to 
the same as the workgroup name, and the domain master browser is 
just one level up from the local master.  It's kinda redundant in 
that situation, and only comes into play when you have multiple 
workgroups.  You can still have samba do domain logins, process 
logon scripts, etc; you have to turn on the domain login stuff in 
the windoze network client.

If all you have is the two samba servers (linux? solaris?) in the 
same workgroup and no NT domain controller, then you should be able 
to do it like this:

Set one samba box at OS level 65 and wins support = yes (domain 
logins are optional).  Make it the preferred domain and local 
master browser.  Point the clients and the other samba box to the 
WINS server.  Set the second samba box at OS level 32 and local 
master (this should make it defer to the other one, unless the 
first one is down).  Disable browse master in the windoze clients 
(this will stop the constant browse master wars).  You could also 
have all the NetBIOS hostnames in lmhosts files as a backup in case 
the WINS server is down.  For IP name resolution, you can use hosts 
files on all the machines (you get to decide when maintenance gets 
to be too much of a pain) or DNS (comes with linux; you could 
probably run the same named/bind stuff on other boxes too).  If you 
do the latter, you can kill WINS and use DNS proxy.

For accounts, the same user accounts/passwords on the both samba 
boxes would probably ease logins; you could probably just sync the 
smbpasswd files on both machines (you can step in here anytime 
Jerry).  I'm not using one samba box as a password server for the 
other one.  Maybe NIS would be better, but I'm no expert there.

I'll be able to experiment more with this kind of thing once I 
finish my damn network, but other things have intervened...

Steve

************************************************
Steve Arnold  CLE (Certifiable Linux Evangelist)
http://www.rain.org/~sarnold