[Samba] Ldap replication

[Gaiseric Vandal]

WINS servers aren't, at least in theory, absolutely essential.  I have 
just found that over the years it makes locating/browsing for  
Windows/Samba resources more reliable (espectially with multiple network 
segments and  multiple domains.)   If you aren't using WINS, clients 
will locate other machines via broadcasts.

If I understand everything correctly, WINS (name resolution) lets you 
use a central server (vs broadcast) for locating Windows/Samba "servers" 
(and by server this would include XP machine since they do can share 
files and printers.)   Part of finding machines is finding the master 
browser, which then actually lists what shared resources are available 
across all the machines.    If you don't use WINS, machines can take 
longer to show up in the Network Neighborhood.



So if the PDC goes down, the BDC should become the master browser 
(listing available resources) and the clients should (eventually) give 
up trying to locate machines via the specified WINS server and switch 
back to broadcast.    You could probably configure DHCP to assign 
multiple WINS server IP parameters to your Win clients-  and then if 
your PDC looks like it will be down for a while you could make the BDC 
be the wins server.

Unfortunately samba does not support WINS replication.

If my PDC does go offline, since it is also the primary file server, 
WINS functionality becomes irrelevant.







On 12/04/09 11:10, Michael Wood wrote:
> 2009/12/2 Gaiseric Vandal<gaiseric.vandal at gmail.com>:
> [...]
>    
>> Make sure that all machines are using the same WINS server.   I have my PDC
>> as the WINS server.
>>      
> What needs to be done if the PDC fails?  Update the config on all the
> machines to point to another WINS server?
>
>