[Samba] can connect to 2 samba servers by name but to one by IP only

[Gaiseric Vandal]

Even though it is a fully virtual NIC I think the firewall (Sonicwall) still blocks Netbios broadcasts.    So as far as I can tell, using DNS is the only way a VPN client could resolve a windows machine name.

When I connect to the vpn, I can immediately use "net use \\someserver" on pretty much all the servers.  I would expect that if I am using a browser functionality to locate windows resources, I might have to wait a few minutes until this worked.

I will see if I can tdbdump the browser database files on the PDC (which should be the master browser.)     I have other machines on the network that are DC's in their own domains, that may also try to be the master browsers.  But they all point to the same WINS server (one of the samba BDC's) so I think this should not be an issue.    Generally I find that the use of WINS (and also making sure that the servers are listed in DNS) makes most issues go away.



-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Miller [mailto:bob at computerisms.ca] 
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 12:07 AM
To: gaiseric.vandal at gmail.com
Cc: samba at lists.samba.org
Subject: Re: [Samba] can connect to 2 samba servers by name but to one by IP only

> The XP
> VPN Clients are not using hosts or lmhosts files.  Wins is not used over the
> VPN.        All the samba and windows machines on the network are configured
> to use WINS so I don't think they would respond to netbios broadcast
> requests looking for a machine by name.     
> 
>  
Does it not work that when a windows machine has no wins server that it
can use the master browser to resolve netbios names?  If such is the
case, then perhaps the pdc is not being listed by the master browser
that the vpn clients are consulting?
I am not familiar with the type of VPN you are working with, but I know
broadcast is a problem for the ones I have worked with.  If you have a
full virtual nic on the LAN, then this probably isn't a problem for you,
but in my experience, a vpn client cannot send a broadcast packet to a
remote LAN.  This has caused me some serious grey hairs over my time
playing with vpns and windows networking, seems a lot of things depend
on it.
just some thoughts...



Bob Miller
334-7117/660-5315
http://computerisms.ca
bob at computerisms.ca
Network, Internet, Server,
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