[Samba] very very weird problem, Samba completely broken

[Logan Shaw]

On Fri, 7 Jul 2006, Craig White wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-07-07 at 17:45 -0400, Eric Evans wrote:
>> This is very strange and frustrating.  Our users complained that they
>> weren't able to get ANY Samba access, not even being able to map a network
>> drive (forgetting for now about that domain logon thing for a while).  So I
>> went into the /etc/samba/smb.conf and took out all of the statements that
>> had anything to do with domain controlling and net logons, basically
>> restoring the smb.conf to the state it was in before I started messing
>> around with all that domain controller stuff.

> probably would be much easier if you understood Windows Networking
> principles.

For what it's worth, I had a hard time with this when I first
began working with Samba.  I had no difficulty with the Unix
end or with networking in general, but when you're coming
from a Unix background and setting up Samba on your server,
it takes some time to wade through and get oriented with
Windows networking concepts.

I found that the best thing for me was to read the book
"Implementing CIFS".  Even though it's targeted at developers,
it seemed to cover things from a Unix point of view.  I found
that a much more helpful source of conceptual information
than the Samba docs, which are really targeted at the Samba
implementation of the set of protocols rather than the protocols
themselves.

>> [2006/07/07 17:24:18, 0]
>> nmbd/nmbd_incomingrequests.c:process_name_refresh_request(183)
>>    process_name_refresh_request: unicast name registration request received
>> for name WORKGROUP<00> from IP 128.253.175.150 on subnet UNICAST_SUBNET.
>> [2006/07/07 17:24:18, 0]
>> nmbd/nmbd_incomingrequests.c:process_name_refresh_request(184)
>>    Error - should be sent to WINS server
> ----
> Nothing below suggests that you are using a WINS server...not in the
> Windows clients, not in smb.conf.
>
> 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'

Based on the log message, it seems that 128.253.175.150 was the
IP of the host that sent the request, not the destination of
the request.  At least that's how I interpret "should be sent
to WINS server".  To me, that phrase means "I got a request
as if somebody thought I was the WINS server but I'm not, so I
thought I'd let you know somebody thinks I am".  In other words,
128.253.175.150 is the address of a misconfigured client.
(Or the server that generated that log message needs "wins
support = yes" turned on.)

   - Logan