[Samba] very very weird problem, Samba completely broken

[Edmundo Valle Neto]

Eric Evans escreveu:
>
>> probably would be much easier if you understood Windows Networking
>> principles.
>
> I'm sure it would, I'm trying my best to learn them.  In the meantime 
> I have a bunch of users who are impatient to get this thing working 
> ASAP and who are not patient enough to wait around while I read an 
> entire book on Windows networking before tackling their problem.

Only and advice.

By personal experience, if you do something expecting that it will just 
works, without testing it first or really knowing what you are doing, 
probably a lot of problems will arise.
Every time I needed to deploy something that I didnt know about (never 
have done) and didnt had time to learn and test it (and the time of 
deploy really was critical) I contracted someone to do that part.
If you cant make sure it will work it doesnt count as an alternative.
 
>
>> Nothing below suggests that you are using a WINS server...not in the
>> Windows clients, not in smb.conf.
>
> That is entirely correct.  I'm not using a WINS server and I have no 
> need to use a WINS server.
>

Yes you really doesnt need a WINS server if all machines are in the same 
network segment, but even for small networks (with an always available 
server) its recommended, that way you will have a dns-like service and 
the clients will not need to broadcast all the time to make name 
resolution works.

>> Make life easy for yourself, add 'wins support = yes' to smb.conf and
>> change your dhcp server to use 128.253.175.150 as WINS server and node
>> type = '8'
>
> I have tried adding 'wins support = yes' to the smb.conf and it has no 
> effect on this problem.  Furthermore I don't see why that should be 
> necessary anyway since I'm not running a WINS server.  Also, I can't 
> change our DHCP server because it is controlled by a centralized 
> agency that I have no authority over, and I don't have configuration 
> access to it.
>

wins support = yes, tells samba to BE a WINS server, to make a 
difference ALL clients MUST use it, to not ending up having partial 
views of the neighborhood and resources available. Besides the error 
message, your client shouldnt appear to be using it as a WINS server, I 
dont know if it should work only setting that option and having that 
"node type = unknown" config problem on the clients. About the DHCP 
thing, its only easyer to deploy WINS configuration using it, you can 
specify an address and node type to the clients, but it can be done 
manually too, in each client (the node type only can be changed in the 
registry then, but its not normally necessary, the default not unknown 
value should work well).

>> READ the documentation...Samba by Example does excellent handholding for
>> the impatient...
>>
>> http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/Samba-Guide/
>>
>> I would suggest that you start with 'Small Office Networking'
>
> Yes I agree that the documentation is important, and I assure you that 
> I have been reading it and I'm still reading it.  I could just use a 
> little help here, is all.
>

No comments, the two samba books are the minimal things that people that 
deploy servers really need to read.

>> Also note that firewalls would block access - probably a very good idea
>> to run firewalls on these systems since they appear to have public IP
>> addresses - thus a 'hosts allow = 128.253.175. ' would be a very good
>> thing. Firewall would have to allow ports 137:139 and probably 445 from
>> that same ip address range.
>
> Not going across a firewall, so this is not a problem.
>
>> Also note that you don't have any shares that users can see in your
>> above configuration since a "HOMES" share is only pertinent to those
>> that attach to a PDC/BDC and since you have surrendered that ground in
>> frustration, you can't have it.
>
> Now this is an interesting and surprising statement.  When we were 
> running Samba 2 we were definitely not using PDC or BDC, but we had a 
> homes share declared in the smb.conf and people were connecting to it 
> every day without any difficulty.  But you're saying now that you 
> can't connect to the homes share unless you are attaching to a PDC or 
> BDC?  When did this happen?  Was this a change in Samba's policy that 
> occurred when they went from version 2 to version 3?

Hmm, not really. You can have home shares and connect to them manually 
without need to be a DC.

>
> Thanks,
> Eric
>


Regards.

Edmundo Valle Neto