Windows machines can (only sometimes) not see the linux samba servers (after 35 days)

[William R. Knox]

I have seen problems where our Samba boxes disappear from the WINS servers
that we have set up here for no apparent reason. In addition, I have done
some work with our NT group and discovered that the expiration date of our
WINS registration on primary and secondary WINS servers can differ
greatly, which will cause occasional problems. Are you using WINS on an NT
box at your installation? The next time you are no longer available on the
network, query the WINS box with nmblookup to see if you are still
registered, then stop and restart the nmbd daemon to re-register with the
WINS server and try nmblookup again.

We have implemented a nightly restart of the nmbd daemon in order to
circumvent this issue. This was easier than trying to figure out what was
going on and whether it was a samba problem or a problem with our NT
servers. Kludgy, I know. As soon as I have a free week, I'll start trying
to figure it out ;-)

			Bill Knox
			Senior Operating Systems Programmer/Analyst
			The MITRE Corporation

On Wed, 17 Jan 2001 maro.hartmann at lr.org wrote:

> Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 11:13:11 +0100
> From: maro.hartmann at lr.org
> To: samba at us5.samba.org
> Subject: Windows machines can (only sometimes) not see the linux samba
>     servers (after 35 days)
>
> Dear all,
>
> 1. I am running two linux boxes in a heterogeneous tcp-ip / ipx network.
> 2. Samba 2.0.7 is running on both linux machines.
> 3. Kernel 2.2.16
> 4. The problem now is that really ONLY SOMETIMES the windows 9x machines in the network cannot see samba shares.
> 5. After rebooting the linux machines everything is fine again.
>
> Has anybody seen this problem before?
> Why does this appear only SOMETIMES (after 35 days of constant good service).
>
> Does any know what is going on here. The 35 day phenomenon is now consolidating.
>
> Thank you very much in advance if any has any idea.
>
> Regards
>
> Maro Hartmann