samba as local master browser does not supply a list

Phil Chambers P.A.Chambers at exeter.ac.uk
Fri Nov 30 06:43:02 GMT 2001


On Mon, 19 Nov 2001 11:08:28 -0500 Joel Hammer <Joel at HammersHome.com> wrote:

> Have you read the BROWSING docs in /docs/textdocs in the samba sources?
> Joel
> On Mon, Nov 19, 2001 at 03:36:43PM +0000, Phil Chambers wrote:
> > I am new to samba and have searched the list archive before sending to this list.  I 
> > found lots of messages relating to browse problems, but none seemed to match mine.
> > 
> > I have samba 2.2.2 on a IRIX system and I can access shares OK using it.  However if 
> > I let samba become the local master browser then all the machines in the workgroup 
> > show blank lists in the network neighborhood.  If I look at the var/locks/browse.dat 
> > file it contains all the information I would expect.  "nmblookup -M wrkgrp" lists my 
> > samba system as the master browser.  The problem is that samba does not want to hand 
> > this information to the other clients on the network.
> > 
> > Any suggestions would be welcome.
> > 

I eventually found the browsing problem and am surprised at what it was.  The 
permissions on the browse.dat file were wrong!

My comments on this are:

1) Given that it was nmbd which created this file in the first place, I don't 
understand why it did not create it with suitable permissions.

2) SAMBA only logs this error at a debug level of 4.  At that level there is so much 
logging that it is difficult to see the wood for the trees. Surely, reporting a 
fundamental problem like this should be at level zero?

I only found this by looking in the source to see where browse.txt was accessed and 
then seeing that I needed a log level of 4 to find out if the file had failed to 
open.

Phil.
---------------------------------------
Phil Chambers (postmaster at exeter.ac.uk)
University of Exeter





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