Gethostbyaddr failed

[berton sierens]

Hi

Is it normal that gethostbyaddr keeps complaining that it can't find the hostname for an address?  This error keeps popping up in the log.smb.  My Samba server is using a NT WINS server for name registration and resolution.  The individual logfiles don't complain about this.  Here's the full story:

Yesterday suddenly nobody could log on no more to our Samba Fileserver.  The server itself seemed to be doing just fine.  From the other Linux boxes I could log on to SMB, but from the Windows clients I couldn't even telnet or ftp to SMB.
We discovered that this problem was caused by a leased line that was down with our corporate headquarters where the DNS server was (for their domain).  
So in order to log on to SMB fileserver DNS had to be running maybe?  When the leased was back on line, everything was back to normal.  So we decided to manage our own DNS domain.  We installed our own DNS on Linux that manages our domain (registered all right) alone.  After a few hours of configuring the DNS, things seemed to be running normal again.  So next time we lost contact with headquartes we should be fine.
 
Can anyone explain to me why SMB needs a DNS server when all it needs really is netbios resolution?

Thanks.

Berton.
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