[Samba] Re: samba problems after IP change

[Will Parsons]

Will Parsons <wbp at Ysnet.net> wrote:
> I want to use samba to back up some directories on a QNX server to a
> Windows office network drive.  (For those who may not be familiar with it,
> QNX is a commercial OS similar to Unix.)  I am a samba newbie, but managed
> to fumble my way through this, using cron on the QNX machine to run
> smbclient command to copy a tar file to the Windows drive:
> 
> smbclient //swin0001/comq -U$userpass -WCNT \
>           -c "cd phase3/cqarch; put $logfile; put $tarfile"
> 
> This worked, but after an office move, the IP addresses of the machines
> changed (both are still on the same subnet), and the smbclient now fails.
> I have reconfigured the QNX machine for the new address, and regular TCP/IP
> (ping, ftp, telnet, &c.) between the machines works fine.  Running
> 
> smbclient -U% -L localhost
> 
> on the QNX machine shows expected shares.  The Workgroup name matches the
> WinNT domain name.  Running
> 
> elm% smbclient //swin0001/comq -Uparsonw -WCNT
> 
> shows:
> 
> added interface ip=10.93.52.35 bcast=10.93.55.255 nmask=255.255.248.0
> Connection to swin0001 failed
> 
> On the Windows side,
> 
> net view \\elm
> 
> (where elm is the name of the QNX machine) results in a message:
> 
> System error 53 has occurred
> The network path was not found.
> 
> The QNX machine is no longer showing up in Network Neighborhood.
> 
> nbtstat -A 10.93.52.35
> 
> shows entries for ELM with a status Registered.
> 
> As far as I know, the only change to the network configuration was the new
> IP subnet.  (I have direct control over the QNX machine, but the Windows
> machines are managed by the IT department.)  Any thoughts on what broke or
> how to fix it would be welcome.

Thanks to a response by private e-mail, I now have this working.  Part of
the problem was that the netmasks were not the same on the QNX and the
WinNT machines.  Fixing this allowed the samba shares to be seen by
Windows.  However, smbclient still was unable to connect, I think because
the although the QNX machine and my local WinNT machine were on the same
subnet, the shared drive was still on the old subnet.  Adding a "wins
server =" line the smb.conf then fixed the problem.

One more question - I found a WINS server by running "net view" on the
Window machine and noticing that one of the servers had a "remark"
containing the string "Backup WINS".  (There is nothing listed for WINS
server in the TCP/IP Properties.)  Is there a better of determining WINS
servers?

- Will Parsons