[Samba] Windows client with two NICs

[Gaiseric Vandal]

Is this a persistent VPN connection>

There are different mechanisms involved in "pinging" a machine compared 
to locating machines in "My Network Places" (or "Network" depending on 
your OS version.")

I would make sure your internal DNS server has entries for all the 
servers in question.


I would recommend a WINS server in a LAN environment.     Otherwise you 
are relying you are relying on the Windows Browser service to populate 
"My Network Places."    If you are on a VPN connection, you should be 
getting an IP address of the remote LAN on your virtual NIC (which 
sounds like it is the case)-  assuming netbios traffic is not blocked 
you should eventually see all the servers on the remote site in "My 
Network Places" even if you aren't using WINS.    Make sure that the 
"ipconfig /all" command shows that you have a WINS server assigned.

If you have a 2 LAN segments, each with a WINS server you want to check 
out the smb.conf options for "remote browse sync" and "remote announce" 
-  assuming a persistent and routable VPN connection.


My opinion is that browsing for servers in "My Network Places" is only 
practical in a LAN environment-  not with a VPN connection (at least 
with my 5/2 VPN connection from home- a corporate VPN connection with a 
50 Mbit internet link on each end might be different.)  I would 
explicitly map a drive letter to a known network server/share over the 
VPN and not browse for the service.

On 12/05/2011 02:27 PM, Timothy Madden wrote:
> Hello
>
> I have a Windows 7 SP1 computer at work, and I want to connect to a 
> different subnet over an OpenVPN connection.
>
> First I have this question: if I have a Windows client with two NICs, 
> each one with its own sub-net (172.16.0.0/24 and 10.0.0.0/8) and no 
> routing, should I be able to see and ping all samba computer names 
> from both networks ?
>
> I am asking because the 172.15.0.0/24 network is the virtual (OpenVPN) 
> network, with only two nodes: my computer and the VPN server. The VPN 
> server has computer name 'console', and has samba 3.033-3.29.el5_7.4 
> on CentOS 5.7. From within its own sub-net, where all nodes run 
> smb/nmb and use wins for name resolving, I can `ping console´ 
> successfully and the name is found. However from my computer, on the 
> same (virtual) network as console, computer name console is no longer 
> found. Do I have to do something for my Windows client to see the 
> computer names from both networks ?
>
> Also, I would like to have all the samba computer names from the VPN 
> server network, 192.168.0.0/24, visible on my windows client. Can I 
> set broadcast propagation somehow so the names from 192.168.0.0/24 
> network are visible on the 172.16.0.0/24 network ?
>
> Everyone says that over routed networks I can use a WINS server for 
> name resolution, and of course as soon as I set up the samba server 
> running on the VPN server machine as a WINS server, and set the 
> openvpn built-in DHCP server to announce it to the clients, the names 
> became visible (although look-up is very slow). However the VPN server 
> network is a small one (8 computers) and I would like not to set up 
> any of them as a server, so I would like a decentralized (broadast) 
> way to make the names visible to my Windows 7 client through VPN.
>
> Thank you,
> Timothy Madden
>