ghost machines, revisited

[Jim Watt]

On Thu, 3 Jan 2002, Keith Warno wrote:

} These things do not look like WINS issues; the ghost machines are not in
} wins.dat but rather than browse.dat.
}
} I nuked both wins.dat and browse.dat on the samba WINS server, and the
} ghosts have returned so it seems the WINS box is getting some mis-guided
} information from somewhere.  Crap.

How about the "browser election on a non-isolated subnet" syndrome?
Even if a Windows box *knows* about a WINS server, browser elections
happen on subnets.  The winner announces itself as the browse
master for the subnet it's on.

I've seen this result in *seriously* broken browse lists!  If the machine
that wins the election is the WINS server, or knows how to contact the
WINS server, it can present a complete picture of the "neighborhood".
If not, the population of the "network neighborhood" changes, depending
on what won the last election.

We have two disjoint Class-C size subnets in use at our site.  To
prevent browser elections from being won by things like Win98 machines,
we've taken two steps:

1) Turn off the "Computer Browser" service on *everything* that doesn't
   need it on.  That prevents stray machines from winning browser elections.
   It also cuts down on the noise made by browser elections.

2) Make sure *something* will win elections, even if there isn't an NT
   Primary or Backup Domain controller on the subnet.  That means Samba
   with a high enough OS level to win against anything but an NT PDC/BDC.

Jim
-- 
Jim Watt                               wattjg at appliedbiosystems.com
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