[Samba] Abnormal Windows behaviour with Samba

[Chris Smith]

On Thursday 31 May 2007, Erebus wrote:
> I really agree about the WINS part - that's why I prefer enabling this
> functionality in Samba. It seems that it resolves a lot of issues in
> general. However what do you mean by DNS? Do you believe that I have to
> install Bind on my server and create zone files for each terminal?

Or some DNS server. I've used bind in the past and been using djbdns lately 
with good results. Windows will only use netBIOS resolution as a fallback so 
it may be slower. However, you did state you set up hosts files which should 
be looked at first in all cases. But hosts files are a maintenance nightmare 
(anything over 5 PC's it becomes absurd) and DNS will serve you much better. 
Also if you plan to use hosts in place of DNS then your hosts files should 
contain the name IP mapping, be properly setup (both short and fqdn names 
with a carriage return at the end) for all of the systems and be placed on 
all of the systems. Plus hosts files AFAIK don't provide any reverse 
information (cannot resolve name from IP address). 

> If this 
> is the case, what would be a sample configuration for each zone? I have
> only installed Bind for real domains.. Can I create zones without TLDs
> (i.e. just PC-01)? If a fake TLD is needed, do I have to call the server's
> share using this TLD (i.e. \\server.tld\share\whatever)? Explain this
> please, as it's a little confusing to me...

Not necessary for a "real TLD", ample info is avaliable in numerous places to 
assist with this.

> > Also when using user and group names in smb.conf it's a good idea (and
> > mandatory in some cases) to fully qualify the names as
> > DOMAINNAME\username or
> > DOMAINNAME\groupname, ex: X-NET\x-admin, X-NET\erebus, etc.
>
> Is this also the case if Samba is not configured as a PDC, but just as a
> workgroup server? I don't use a domain in my configuration.

Good question, don't really know, but if it doesn't hurt I would try it that 
way. I always thought that domain logons and domain master went hand in hand. 
Odd that you specified one and not the other. Do you have a Windows NT PDC? 
If so then you shouldn't specify "domain master = yes" and might as well let 
the PDC be the WINS server as well, if not there's no reason I can think of 
not to make Samba a PDC as well by specifying "domain logons = yes". I guess 
I don't see the sense in running a 30 PC network without a domain controller 
as it makes everything so much more manageable.

Chris