[Samba] bug - 3.0.14, 3.0.21 intractable browsing problems - help needed

Stephen Bosch posting at vodacomm.ca
Sat Jan 28 06:26:39 GMT 2006


Hi, Anthony:

Thanks for your reply. My comments are below.

Anthony Messina wrote:
> stephen, in your earlier posts, you mentioned that these are windows
> 2000 clients; is that correct?

Yes, that is true, however -- in our laboratory environment, the clients
are XP clients, and we observe the same problem.

> perhaps, just perhaps, it has something to do with windows 2000.  the
> "known good" setup i sent you only has winxp and linux/samba clients on
> it and i do not have a way to test windows 2000 clients.
> 
> are there any registry-related keys or security settings for windows
> 2000 computers that my affect their ability to receive browse lists from
> a non-windows domain browser?

Nothing that has been deliberately added. The machines at the production
site were part of a Windows NT 4.0 domain prior to the introduction of
Samba.

> on any one of the windows 2000 computers, what is the output of the
> nbtstat command line program with/without the linux computer as the pdc?

I'll have to post it -- I need to get onto an XP machine to do that. In
the meantime, I can tell you that I am able to use nbtstat to examine
machines, and the PDC reports itself as the master browser, but nbtstat
doesn't provide me any information about the contents of the master
browse list.

When I do "net view", I get the text equivalent of the empty My Network
Places.

> does anything show up in the windows 2000 logs about browsing control?

No, much to my surprise. I've looked through the event viewer and don't
see any browse errors (but I also don't see any information regarding
browser elections).

I think it's important to make a distinction here between being unable
to browse the network, and being able to browse the network but not
seeing any objects in the browse list. As far as the client is
concerned, it has a valid browse list -- the trouble is that it contains
0 objects. I am not seeing an error such as "Unable to browse the network."

> i have been researching this problem, to no avail for you.  is your
> samba computer also the pdc (sorry i can't recall for the moment)?

Yes, the Samba computer is the PDC. (Thanks for all your effort, by the
way).

> i would like to keep plugging away at this and i think we maybe should
> look at things from the windows side for a bit to see if something may
> be done there.
> 
> check out these microsoft support articles (they may or may not solve
> the problem instantly, but they may give some clues as to where to go).
> 
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/168821/en-us

This one is quite vague...

> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/135404/en-us

This seems only to apply when browsing across network segments. The
problem we are experiencing is happening with clients on the same
network segment.

> these two links apply to windows 2000 and not windows xp so i'm thinking
> that some browsing differences on the windows side may exist between the
> two.
> 
> also, i can give you the option of posting this problem in my own
> support forum at http://messinet.com/modules.php?name=Forums if you feel
> like no one else on this list is working on this with you.

Thanks. It's not that I don't think people on this list are working with
me; this is just a stumper, and I don't think the answer is obvious.

-Stephen-


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