WINS problems

Bryn Hughes bryn at ultranet.ca
Fri Feb 16 00:03:43 GMT 2001


Hello all,

I'm having some strange problems with WINS.  I've got a Red Hat 6.2 box
running Samba 2.0.6.  All users on the local subnet can see the Samba server
no problem.

Now, where things go weird:  We want to be able to see our Samba server from
our other subnets as well.  I have the Samba box set up as a WINS server,
local browse master, domain master, and preferred master.  The os level is
set to 255 which should make sure Samba always wins the election.

There are a very few other NT servers here, NONE of which are set up as WINS
servers to the best of my knowledge.  Certainly none of the workstations
have WINS server entries at all, other than the few test machines we've set
up which have the Samba server as their WINS server.  We are in a Novell 5
environment otherwise, all workstations are NT Workstation 4 with service
pack 5 installed, along with either Novell Client 4.6 SP1 or 4.7.

I have managed to get ONE of the workstations I have tested to see the Samba
box.  It works somewhat intermittently, rebooting will almost always cause
the Samba server to disappear for a while.  When it IS working, sometimes it
can see all the workstations that the Samba server can see on its subnet and
sometimes it can only see the Samba server and not the rest of the machines
that it should be seeing.  Other workstations get nothing, they see the
local machines on the same subnet as them but not the Samba server.
Checking with ipconfig /all DOES show that the primary WINS server is the
Samba server.

I'm somewhat stumped.  Leaving the one station that sometimes works up and
running for long periods of time USUALLY eventually results in being able to
see everything as it should.  However rebooting it will cause everything in
the Samba server's subnet to disappear again.  And like I said, I haven't
been able to get any other workstations to even go this far.

Does anyone have any ideas on this?  The fact that it works at all suggests
that Samba is at least configured somewhat correctly and is successfully
becoming the master browser on its network.  The log files don't seem to
show anything too interesting, except for the occasional problem trying to
send NetBIOS packets to the broadcast address for that network.

Thanks in advance,

Bryn





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