Progress on Win 98 Browsing Problem

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

Hi Everyone,

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a few messages about problems that I was
having with a Win 98 client not being able to browse or connect to Samba
2.0.3 running on Linux. Thanks to help from David Collier-Brown and Hugh
Redelmeier, I stumbled across the culprit although I still do not
understand why it behaves as it does.

Samba is running as the WINS server. There is a line in nsswitch.conf which
reads:

hosts:      files nisplus nis dns


When I looked in log.smb, I saw the following line:

  Gethostbyaddr failed for 192.168.1.54

where 192.168.1.54 is my Win 98 client.

When I changed the hosts: line in nsswitch.conf to read "files", I was able
to browse and connect very quickly.

I have dial-on-demand on the Linux box via diald. I restored nsswitch.conf
to its original state, i.e. hosts: files nisplus nis dns. When I try to
browse the NN, diald brings up the PPP connection to do a DNS lookup. Until
the PPP connection is made, the NN window does not display anything other
than the sweeping flashlight. As soon as the PPP link is up, the NN is
refreshed and I can browse and connect to the shares on the Linux box very
quickly from the Win 98 client. Again, I notice a Gethostbyaddr failure in
log.smb. Clearly, there is some connection between WINS and DNS that I do
not understand. The documentation is sketchy on this. Why am I getting the
gethostbyaddr failure? How can I prevent Samba from doing DNS lookups?

Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis Corporation
3266 Yonge Street, Suite 1419
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M4N 3P6

Voice/Fax: 416-410-3326

mailto:clifford_ilkay at dinamis.com