[Samba] SRV records.

[A. James Lewis]

OK, fair point... perhaps I wasn't clear enough, this happens a lot... 
probably my brain just operates on a different wavelength.... in my 
original message I said "what method does it use to decide which is the 
correct (most local?) domain controller to connect to"


The answer I got was "it uses sites, you need to set up sites"... the 
answer I was hoping for was one of

a) "If your AD controller has sites set up, and you do the SRV lookup 
against the AD controllers own DNS server then it will send you only 
local AD controllers based on the source subnet of the DNS query"

or

b) "If your AD controller has sites set up,then there will be some 
broadcast magic happening from the AD controller informing the clients 
how to prioritize the AD servers returned from the SRV query"

or

c) /something else/

Having read the samba wiki article on sites you linked (Thanks muchly), 
and the microsoft technet it references, I'm now even more confused, 
since you stated that nothing needs to be done at the client and it 
works exactly like a windows client... and that samba does not support 
sites (which in light of the earlier comment, I took to mean that 
support for sites is not in the client).

However, the technet article states that "When a client requests a 
domain controller, it provides its site name to DNS."... which implies 
that there must be some support in the client... and the Samba Wiki 
article suggests that this information is encoded into the SRV query, 
under a "sites" subdomain, which also implies that the client is 
complicit, and must know it's site name.

Finally, the original comment is that it does not work if I query via a 
BIND nameserver, which seems not to make sense if it's just encoded in a 
subdomain, a'la 
"_ldap._tcp._MySite_._sites.dc._msdcs.samdom.example.com". This makes me 
think that there must be a "site =" parameter in the smb.conf.

I hope it's clear why I'm confused.... and I apologize if I contributed 
to said confusion.

James


On 19/05/2019 08:45, Rowland penny via samba wrote:
> On 19/05/2019 01:53, A.James Lewis via samba wrote:
>> I think you are missing the point...
> No, you never gave us the point, this is the first time you said that 
> your computers are actually in a 'site'
>> the windows sysadmins have set up
>> sites, but they are blaming slow logins on Samba not correctly
>> interpreting the site and trying to contact a remote DC in a different
>> site... so I need to know how the DC communicates the site information
>> to the client.
>
> They communicate just the same as a Windows clients, so if you have 
> slow logins, then I suggest you check that your clients are actually 
> set up to use the DC(s) in the site as their nameserver.
>
> Try reading this:
>
> https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Active_Directory_Sites
>
> It should help you understand sites better, but from the Samba point 
> of view it requires updating, as you now can use samba-tool instead of 
> ADUC.
>
> Rowland
>
>
>