Summary: SAMBA requesting to be a master browser....

[George Gallen]

Mystery solved!

Multiple responses pointed out that if the master browser didn't respond
within the 12 minutes, that a new election would be forced, and chances
are that our unix system beat out the NT. (awww). The question of why
our system (SAMBA) even participated in the election I still don't know,
unless the default really isn't 0 for os level (at least for our
version).

The problem it turned out was that the router from the NT wins server
was
NOT on a UPS...AND the power failure (1 minute in duration), occurred at
the same time frame that the NT was to send out it's "I'm the master
browser".
Since now it was going to wait 12 minutes for the next broadcast, it
thought
everything was fine. Only problem was the packet never made it our
system
within the time frame, so it decided to be the master browser.

I have since added: os level = 0 (which should have been the default)
and domain master = no (which also should have been the default)

It was suggested as well to use local master = no (however my version of
SAMBA didn't recognize this parameter).

Thank you to all who responded.

George Gallen
ggallen at slackinc.com

-------------------------------

Original Post:
We are running samba 1.9.16p11, and seem to be doing
just fine.

Last Month, our IT dept informed us that our machine
was attempting to be a master browser, which the NT
Wins server was not happy about. Below is my global
config options. 

When I killed/restarted the samba daemons (running as
daemons and not via inetd) the problem seem to vanish.
Feeling this was a fluke, it was dismissed.

Apparantly it happened again, last week, so I'm wondering....

The network is totally W95/98/NT, with the exception of
our unix system. Is there some way that samba can be made
to kick into a master browser mode, even though the config
file has "no" for preferred master?

Yes, I realize this is an older version, but will upgrading
solve this issue? Since there were never problems before, I
had no reason to upgrade.

There are no files other than log. files on our system. I had
another samba system setup before 1.9.18, which was setup for
master browsing, and it started creating domain files, which
is not the case this time.

What/how can I setup tcpdump scan the outgoing packets to determine
when our system is jumping into the master browser mode?
this way I can try to get a jump and monitor the packets
myself on our end

Another piece of information just came in, there was a power
outage at the time SAMBA started requesting to be master
broswer, Our system is on a UPS, it never went down, the 
NT WINS server was on a UPS as well and is said to have 
not gone down.

However, MANY PC's throughout the building DID go down and
rebooted themselves. Could this be of any relevance? Not
sure if power was an issue the first time.


[global]
   printing = bsd
   printcap name = /etc/printcap
   load printers = yes
   guest account = nobody
   preferred master = no
   username map = /usr/local/samba/lib/users.map
   wins server = 10.10.1.35
   socket address = 10.10.150.30
   server string = "DEC Alpha 2100"
   wins support = no
   hosts allow =  10.10.100.96 10.10.150.28 10.10.150.30 
   netbios name = alpha
   workgroup = STYX  


Thanks
George Gallen
ggallen at slackinc.com