Errors encountered : " remote server is unavailable"

[Peter Samuelson]

[rparker at VPR.net <rparker at VPR.net>]
> It's not going to be easy to correct this quickly, so I am wondering
> if it's worth putting up WINS on the Samba box to keep this name
> resolution problem (when our connectivity is hosed) from affecting
> internal network connections.

In my very limited experience, WINS can help a lot and almost never
hurts.  It is also extremely simple to set up:

  -main Samba server: set "wins support = true"
  -other Samba servers: set "wins servers = {ip of first server}"
  -Windows clients: fill in dialog under TCP/IP Properties
  -Windows clients using DHCP: in dhcpd.conf on your ISC DHCP server,
   add the options:
     option netbios-name-servers {ip of 1st server}, {ip of 1st server};
     option netbios-node-type 8;
   (use the same IP number twice to work around a bug in Win95 or 98)

If I were you I'd go ahead and try it.

Peter