[Samba] Broadcast probe blocked by firewall

[Niccolo Rigacci]

Hi to all.

I have an unusual problem on a Linux box: sometimes the box is invisible to 
the Windows clients, I have to restart the service to restore proper 
operations. 

I think to have traced down the problem. During bootstrap, eventually Samba 
initialize itself when the iptables firewall is not yet completely 
initialized. During a little time the firewall is rejecting broadcast 
requests. I find this in the log.nmbd:

  Packet send failed to 192.168.1.255(137) ERRNO=Operation not permitted
  ....
  Added server name entry SAMBABOX on subnet UNICAST_SUBNET

After that Samba is isolated from the LAN, I have to restart Samba to fix it.

Is there a way to force Samba to know that the interface is broadcast capable? 
Is there a way to "reload" Samba to do the probe again?

I'm using samba 2.2.3a on Debian Woody.

Thanks very much.

-- 
Niccolo Rigacci
http://www.texnet.it/