samba headaches

[TPsmith at ixl.com]

thanks David.
I thank you for your insight, and would be grateful to get the "write-up" of
your setup, whenever you can.
I found that the "real" reason I was so frustrated, had little to do with my
skill level in networking (I have run multiple networks), and less to do
with SAMBA, but more to do with the fact that I am an network/systems
engineer, with no knowledge of when things change on the infrastructure,
that my infrastructure sits on.
Our corporate network/systems guys, without intent, don't give us
information on what changes they do and/or when.
I had tried to rule them out before I flamed this list, as the reason my
SAMBA wasn't working, but just yesterday learned that they had modified
route tables and wins servers and all kinds of fun stuff that could have
been causing my issues.
I moved the server to this building and put it on the same subnet as the
client machines and everything is fine.  I don't know why it couldn't work
on the separate subnets, but if I had more time to figure it out, before
moving on, I would do the proper research and not waste my and your time
flaming this mailing list.

thanks for your tolerance,
tpaul


-----Original Message-----
From: David Endres [mailto:bigmudcake at yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2000 5:40 PM
To: samba at lists.samba.org
Cc: TPsmith at ixl.com
Subject: RE: samba headaches


>and the networking and multiple subnet issues of
using SAMBA continue.
>Steve and Charles, welcome to the wonderful world of
SAMBA. What you 
>need to
>do, to use SAMBA, is put your SAMBA on Unix box that
is in walking 
>distance
>of your win32 machines, on the same subnet, and never
ever put the 
>server on
>a different subnet or move it far from the users. 
SAMBA is NOT an
>enterprise solution for file access, when going from
a win32 box to a
>Unix/Linux SAMBA server.  It just doesn't Work!

It does work, and works extremely well, I have a WAN
site setup with 3 subnets at and a Linux box located
at each subnet acting as a gateway,Samba (including
WINS),DNS,Webproxy server.

All sites (subnets) can see and access all servers and
shares on the network.  Even people dialing up using
Windows Dialup networking into our site can see all
servers in the network neighbourhood.

Each server acts as a domain login server so login
scripts dont have to travel across the WAN, but all
password authentication happens at the master server.

We operate an NIS system plus use encrypted passwords
to allow users to change their passwords and allow me
to centrally manage users without having to update
every server. 

>  I became a serious Unix administrator over the past
year, I am of course, still learning ALOT, 
>what
>I did learn, from trying to get SAMBA working, from
Win32 boxes to
>SAMBA-Unix box, is forget it, unless the network is
"flat" and/or you 
>are
>right next to the server.

I suggest you do alot more research and reading like I
did, before passing judgement and assuming to be a
"serious" Unix administrator.  There are plenty of
books and pages on the internet describing how to
setup subnet browsing through Samba.  Make use of
search engines on the internet to hunt the docs down.

I will write up a short description of my setup and
necessary options in each smb.conf  for you and send
to you (when I get time) if this helps.

>Unix is great, but for having users, already on a
Windows network, 
>using
>windows clients, just use a WINDOWS server, when part
of the server's
>function is file sharing.... I am tired of fight
SAMBA, I am sure I am 
>not
>the only one.

I get tired of reading to many postings here
describing problems which relate more to people
lacking skills in networking administration than to
SAMBA.  I believe if people took more time to become
more skilled before using such powerful software then
we wouldnt see so many posts. Even using their own
initiative and read the documentation first.

As the saying goes,  A bad carpenter always blames his tools.

=====
.                  ,,,
                  (o o)
==============oOO==(_)==OOo==============
David Endres, mailto:bigmudcake at yahoo.com
===============(   )==(   )==============
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