Two Machines and Samba

[Stephen L Arnold]

On 25 Jul 99, Ryan Thomas Tecco <rtecco at umich.edu> had questions 
about Two Machines and Samba:  

> Here's the sitch: I have a RH 6 machine and an NT 4.0 SP3
> machine that I want to use Samba to make the Linux box space
> available to the NT client. There is no DNS, and there is no
> Internet connection. Each of the two machines has a "dummy IP",
> specifically 192.168.255.253 (NT) and 192.168.255.254 (Linux).
> Trying to browse on the NT box results in either a "Cannot obtain
> list of servers for this workgroup" or "The format of the
> specified network name is invalid".

Is named running on the linux box?  If it is, kill it.  You should 
have all the smbfs stuff enabled in the kernel (along with 
networking, TCP/IP, etc).  Are there any other protocols loaded on 
the NT box?  If so, remove them.  Use only TCP/IP.  I assume you're 
running the proper services on the NT side (I'm *not* an NT guy, so 
I can't help you much there).  Set samba to OS level 65, and 
domain, local, and preferred master browser all to yes.

> In my TCP/IP Properties on the NT box, I am using the Linux IP as
> the Primary WINS Client and enabling smbd to use it's magicial
> WINS server properties. 

Do you mean NT is pointing to samba as the WINS server, and samba 
has WINS server = yes?

> More on debugging. I did, in fact, run through the test list. I
> can telnet and ping both machines on either side. The smb.conf
> passes the 'testparm' test. I connect connect to through loopback
                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Does this mean *cannot* connect?

> to the server with smbclient -L <Linux box IP>, even though I set
> the smb.conf file to accept 127. host. 

I would recommend simplifying your setup; disable all DNS and WINS 
on both sides.  Use hosts and lmhosts files on both machines (in 
the lmhosts on the NT box, you can put #PRE after the samba 
server).  And make sure the loopback address in the RedHat 
/etc/hosts file isn't screwed up (it was on a couple versions).

If you put the loopback in hosts allow, you probably should put the 
ethernet interface in there too (and check the hosts.allow/deny 
files in /etc too).  Check the 

If you use encrypted passwords, make sure you have the proper 
users/passwords in smbpasswd; if you don't, then NT will need the 
plaintext password reg hack.

Some things are undocumented, broken, or just plain goofy on the NT 
side.  For example, "smbclient -L hostname", where hostname belongs 
to either a samba or win95 machine, works fine.  However, if the 
hostname belongs to NT4, then it barfs.  The equivalent command 
from a win95 DOS prompt, "net view \\hostname" also barfs.

You still may need to map a samba share with Net Use first (from an 
NT command prompt) before you can browse, but it should work.

Steve


*************************************************************
Steve Arnold                     http://www.rain.org/~sarnold

Things go better with Linux and King Crimson.