SAMBA and Subnet Browsing

[Toth Ferenc]

On Wed, 16 Aug 2000 20:14:53 +1000, Enrico Payne wrote:

>Hi, I have 3 Samba servers run Samba 2.0.7 on RH6.2, with Kernel 2.2.16-3.
>
>Everything seems to be OK, except that my Win9x clients cannot see other
>Win9x clients across the subnets.
>
>Each server has 2 n/w cards installed, with IP Forwading enabled etc. If the
>user knows the machine name, he can get access to the shared resources
>across all 3 subnets, but using the n/w neighbourhood browser, shows only
>those users on the same subnet. The Win9x clients are all set to point to
>the same primary WINS server, and the secondary WINS server is set to the
>server that they login to. Each of the SAMBA servers has "OS Level =" >=60,
>to ensure that the NT servers on the network do not become controllers.
[...]

Well, you didn't machine if any of the NT servers is a PDC or not. The
problem with it that a NT PDC is by default a domain master browser.
So, if any of your Samba server becomes a domain master browser, the NT
PDC will immediately start another domain browser election and will
loose, start another election, loose it and so on.

Another issue is that you have, according to your smb.conf files, two
samba servers defined as preferred masters. The result will be the same
as above - at least as far as I know :).

Short quotation for browsing.txt that came along with Samba.

"Note that you should NOT set Samba to be the domain master for a
workgroup that has the same name as an NT Domain: on each wide area
network, you must only ever have one domain master browser per
workgroup,
regardless of whether it is NT, Samba or any other type of domain
master
that is providing this service."

I suggest, you designate one of your NT or Samba servers and domain
master browser and make sure, that no other machine ever tries to
become a domain master browser. Take a look at ethereal
(ethereal.zing.org). You can check the network traffic with ethereal
and identify all these master browser elections. On your NT boxes try
using browstat.exe that it part of the NT resource kit. That can help
you in the troubleshooting (who is master browser, who is backup
browser, list the browser list, etc.).

--
Etus