WINS resolution with Samba 2.2.2

[Joel Hammer]

I am rusty on a lot of this network stuff.
As I recall, if you don't have a DNS or an NIS setup, then you have to put
the other hosts into your /etc/hosts file.
I do not recall that you can just ping a host named Sammy on your local
network and get him to respond without knowing his ip. The DNS would tell
you Sammy's ip and then you would broadcast for that ip, and then Sammy
would answer you, telling you his MAC.
If you are interested in this stuff, use tcpdump to watch what happens when
you try to ping various hosts.
You can get some help from the netbios system for pinging.
man nmblookup should be studied.
This command:
nmblookup -T '*'
will ask all the hosts on your local network to respond with their names and
ip's. I have DNS running so I am not sure what you will get without DNS.
nmblookup -U YourWinsServer -T '*' is supposed to ask the wins server.
To find your wins server, try:
nmblookup -M "-"
multi on  I THINK allows you to use an alias on your NIC.
order hosts,bind means to first check your /etc/hosts file and then try the
DNS server.
Now, you could set up your own DNS server, but that would be alot of work.
Using /etc/hosts would be much easier.
The /etc/resolv.conf file is to configure your linux box to use a particular
DNS.
Joel

On Wed, Dec 05, 2001 at 04:59:05PM -0500, Allen Crawford wrote:
> Ok, well then maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree.  I assumed that WINS
> entries were setup in smb.conf since they have entries for it already in
> there.  This is just a resolving issue.  I can ping IPs just fine, just not
> hostnames.  I could of course add all the hosts to the hosts file, but I'm
> hoping to avoid that.  We do not have DNS on our network, just WINS.  Is it
> possible to set it up to handle WINS instead of DNS?  I don't even have an
> /etc/resolv.conf file on this system.  I checked another one and we do, but
> that one is set up externally as our FTP server.  Can you list WINS servers
> in this file?
> 
> Finally, I checked out the /etc/host.conf file and it is:
> 
> order hosts,bind
> multi on
> 
> While I'm at it, what does "multi on" do?  Or "bind" for that matter.
> Doesn't bind have to do with DNS?
> 
> Thanks for the help, sorry if it isn't Samba related.
> 
>  -----Original Message-----
> From: 	Joel Hammer [mailto:Joel at HammersHome.com] 
> Sent:	Wednesday, December 05, 2001 4:49 PM
> To:	Allen Crawford; samba at lists.samba.org
> Subject:	Re: WINS resolution with Samba 2.2.2
> 
> I don't believe samba gets involved in pinging.
> Are you pinging names or ip's?
> If ip's work, then this is a name resolution issue on the linux box.
> Is there a DNS on your network? If there is, add that to your
> /etc/resolv.conf
> file.
> Do you have the other hosts on your network in /etc/hosts?
> Have you configured /etc/host.conf?
> 
> Joel
> On Wed, Dec 05, 2001 at 04:26:21PM -0500, Allen Crawford wrote:
> > I'm a newbie to this list and a newbie to Samba.  I've read some info on
> the
> > web and I'm trying to successfully set up Samba 2.2.2 on Debian 2.2r3.
> > Anyway, I've installed it just fine, it shows up on my NT4 domain just
> fine,
> > I can ping it (using WINS) and can even access a share on it.  However, I
> > cannot ping any computer on our LAN from the Linux box.  I've modified the
> > resolve order in smb.conf so that wins is listed first, followed by hosts,
> > lmhosts, bcast.  I've change the security mode from user to server and
> have
> > the correct domain down.  I basically followed the NT domain instructions
> > from this page:
> > 
> > http://handsonhowto.com/smb101.html <http://handsonhowto.com/smb101.html> 
> > 
> > So, any tips would be greatly appreciated.  Also, if anyone is in the same
> > situation as me (NT 4 Domain, Samba 2.2.2 on Linux) please feel free to
> send
> > me your smb.conf files.
> > 
> > Thanks a lot,
> > Allen