DESKTOP.INI amd & DNS puzzle

[Darrin M. Gorski]

Samba is not at fault. I have seen this with NFS.

Client: Win95a with FTP Software's Interdrive95 PCNFS client
Server: Sun E4500, Solaris 2.6 with no smb services of any kind.

When attempting to mount exported filesystems, I have seen Windows look
for DESKTOP.INI in hundreds of places (and cases) before finally giving up
and moving on.

I don't know what this file is or what is is supposed to do, but your
problem is not with Samba.

Sounds to me like your fix is to not mount the root directory of the
fileserver. That seems dangerous even to a lazy-ish admin like me ;)

                                [Darrin]

--
"I have no special gift. I am only passionately curious." - A. Einstein

Darrin M. Gorski, Research Computer Systems Network Support
Scientific Research Laboratories, Ford Motor Company
Internet: dgorski at ford.com | Tel/Fax: +1 (313) 248-3753

On Wed, 9 Jun 1999, David A. De Graaf wrote:

> I have long been puzzled at the DNS lookups that occur whenever a
> local client tries to view a share on a local server.  My local
> network is connected to the world via a modem connection controlled by
> diald, so whenever my own DNS can't find a name, BAM!  The dialing
> begins.  This is annoying.
> I had added the entry in smb.conf:
> 	name resolve order = wins lmhosts
> in a (vain) attempt to suppress DNS lookups by samba, but still they
> happened.
> 
> I finally tracked the cause.  It's a weird interaction between samba
> and amd, the auto-mount daemon.
> (The samba-2.0.4b server is on Linux Red Hat 6.0; the client is W98.)
> 
> Whenever a client tries to view a share, the server goes through quite
> a dance.  With  'debug level = 4'  I can see in the log.client file
> many attempts to find and open  'DESKTOP.INI".  Samba looks in several
> places for this non-existent file before giving up:
> 
> 	/DESKTOP.INI
> 	/DESKTOP.INI
> 	/DESKTOP.INI
> 	/DESKTOP.INI
> 	/PROC/DESKTOP.INI
> 	/PROC/DESKTOP.INI
> 	/NET/DESKTOP.INI
> 	/NET/DESKTOP.INI
> 
> It is the last two tries that provoke diald, because  amd  interprets
> this as an attempt to auto-mount machine "DESKTOP.INI" at /net.
> Since it doesn't know of any such machine, it sends out a DNS request
> to resolve this name.  It fails, of course, but not until the official
> DNS server gives up.  After a LOOOONG delay, the originally requested
> share is opened and displayed to the client.
> 
> Curiously, samba looks for /NET/DESKTOP.INI only when the the share is
> the root directory of the server.  When a lesser share is viewed the 
> /NET prefix isn't used.
> 
> I tried to find a workaround, but the amd man page is, shall we say,
> opaque.  In /etc/sysconfig/amd I found  /net  specified as the place to
> hang all the automounted file systems, so I changed it to /n.
> Surprise!   Now samba prepends  /N to DESKTOP.INI and we retain the
> problem.
> 
> In /etc/amd.conf reside the rules by which amd operates.  There are
> only two lines:
> 
>     /defaults fs:=${autodir}/${rhost}/root/${rfs};opts:=nosuid,nodev
>     *       rhost:=${key};type:=host;rfs:=/
> 
> I was unable to comprehend this with the "help" of the man page.
> I guessed the '*' was culpable and replaced this line with one
> each for my small collection of machines, naming them explicitly
> instead of the *.
> 
> That did the trick.  Each attempt to open /NET/DESKTOP.INI fails
> immediately and the requested share is displayed without delay and
> without calling the Internet.
> 
> I suppose only God and Mr. Bill know for sure why DESKTOP.INI is
> needed, and why samba looks in such unlikely places for it.
> I'll pray for an answer, because Mr. Bill surely won't tell.
> 
> But maybe some wise mortal out there knows, and will tell us.
> I wish I didn't have to enumerate to  amd  the machines to allow,
> just because samba looks in funny places for this file.
> 
> -- 
> 	David A. De Graaf    DATIX, Inc.    Hilton Head Is., SC  
> 	degraaf at rhsnet.com       843-785-3136, -3156 (fax)
>