[Samba] smb print server tries to connect back to client?

[John F Flynn III]

I have encountered a bizarre problem upon moving from Samba 2.2.2 to 2.2.4
on our local print server.

When a client tries to map a printer, the server does a DNS lookup on the
netbios name of the client, and tries to contact that IP address. This can
fail in situations where the client's netbios and DNS names don't match,
as in a wireless network user. The failure doesn't prevent printing, but
it adds an annoying delay when mapping the printer.

My questions are:

- Why does the Samba server have to connect back to the client? Printing
  works fine even though this connection fails; there is just an irritating
  delay.

- Why is a DNS lookup being done on the netbios name of the machine? It
  would make more sense to simply talk back to the IP address that initiated
  the connection.

- Can this behavior be disabled? There wasn't a problem with Samba 2.2.2.

Here are the related logs snippets where a failure occurs:

(netbios name of machine: cleo   Actual DNS name: wireless-xxx.cs.fiu.edu
-- cleo is the machine's DNS name only when it's on a specific other
network)

[2002/05/24 15:03:24, 1] lib/util_sock.c:open_socket_out(858)
  timeout connecting to 131.94.127.44:445
[2002/05/24 15:03:44, 1] lib/util_sock.c:open_socket_out(858)
  timeout connecting to 131.94.127.44:139
[2002/05/24 15:03:44, 1] libsmb/cliconnect.c:cli_connect(775)
  Error connecting to 131.94.127.44 (Operation already in progress)
[2002/05/24 15:03:44, 0]
rpc_client/cli_spoolss_notify.c:spoolss_connect_to_client(91)
  connect_to_client: unable to connect to SMB server on machine CLEO.
Error was : SUCCESS - 0.
[2002/05/24 16:42:28, 0] lib/util_sock.c:read_data(434)
  read_data: read failure for 4. Error = Connection reset by peer
[2002/05/24 17:16:38, 0] lib/util_sock.c:read_data(434)
  read_data: read failure for 4. Error = No route to host


--
John Flynn				flynnj at cs.fiu.edu
=========================================================
Systems and Network Administration             /\_/\
School of Computer Science                    ( O.O )
Florida International University               >   <