Samba, WINS, many subnets, etc

[Darrin M. Gorski]

On Thu, 25 Mar 1999, Brandon Hume wrote:

> Is it possible to declare the samba server as the WINS server for all machines
> (which can be done via DHCP), and then prime the running samba with an lmhosts
> generated via the DNS database?  What would happen if a machine with a given
> IP tried to register itself with a different name than what the WINS server
> is told it should be via lmhosts?

We tell the Win95 PC's (via DHCP) what their WINS server is, their DNS
config (the Win95 box needs to have DNS enable for this to work), and
their IP. We use one WINS server (currently a WinNT4 box) and it handles
all of this just fine. If you have enabled DNS on the clients, I believe
that makes the client an H-node, thus it will try serveral different name
resolution methods. (NB, DNS, HOSTS, LMHOSTS, etc.)

> I was thinking a single server doing WINS, probably around 2500 active clients
> at a given time.  The server in mind is fairly mighty, I'm not overly worried
> about load right now.

We have over 1k clients, and have absolutely no problems with this setup.
We DO NOT use any lmhosts files.

> I think the goal is mainly to let the clients connect to each other, and see
> one another in Network Neighborhood.  (I've warned my superiors about the
> vague reliability of NN).

With the exception of timing (sometimes it takes 15m-1h for a machine to
show up in the list), it works wonderfully.

> > The thing you have to remember with all this is that the client determines it's
> > own name, and workgroup.  This is NOT controlled from any central server.
> 
> That's what I've been mentioning to the people encouraging me in this project.

As long as the WINS server is configured on the client, it doesn't matter.
We have about a dozen domain/workgroups and they interoperate just fine -
provided they all use the WINS server (the _SAME_ WINS server).

> > Another thing you could look at at least with the NT boxes is using the
> > "use DNS to resolve windows names" option.

As I mentioned, turning on DNS effectively does this for Win95 clients.

> Unfortunately, the vast majority of the machines are Win95/98.

The only interesting thing I've seen in Win98 has been native support for
SCSI tape drives. Other than that, I prefer to stay far away from Win98 -
the 'Active Desktop/IE' gives me the willys. 

Oh, BTW: we have about 28 subnets. Our Cisco 5500 RSM's are set up to
forward broadcast NB name requests to our WINS server. That basically
makes configuring the WINS server less important, but with WINS
configured broadcasts go way down, and I _LIKE_ that. ;)

                                [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