[NTLUG:Discuss] Samba frustration

[Kelledin]

On Wednesday 26 February 2003 12:19 am, Wayne Dahl wrote:
> Ok, I'm officially frustrated!  I'm attempting to get Samba
> set up for my local network at home and it ain't happening. 
> Let me tell you what I have here.
 <snip>
> Based on what I've been able to find on the net and in the
> internal documents located on this machine, it should work at
> this point.  I should at least be able to see the Linux box
> from the M$ machines in Network Neighborhood, but all I see
> are the Win boxes (most of the time...sometimes all I see in
> Network Neighborhood is Entire Network with no machines in it,
> but the network drives still work and I can still map to them,
> even though Network Neighborhood doesn't display them).

Try setting "local master = no" in your smb.conf file.  I had a 
problem much like yours a while back, where the Samba box would 
completely choke Network Neighborhood browsing whenever it got 
elected as a master browser.

I was never sure why Samba did that, and I didn't really care at 
the time; I had an acceptable workaround.  I'm no longer using 
that workaround, but I've also updated Samba several times and 
turned the Samba box into an NT domain controller.

> Now, per the file DIAGNOSIS.txt in the Samba /docs/textdocs/
> directory, I ran testparm smb.conf and get no errors.  I
> attempt the second test, pinging WAYNESCOMPUTER and DESKPRO
> (the NetBIOS names of the 2 Win 98 boxes) from the Linux box
> and get...
>
> [Wayne at localhost Wayne]$ ping DESKPRO
> ping: unknown host DESKPRO
> [Wayne at localhost Wayne]$ ping WAYNESCOMPUTER
> ping: unknown host WAYNESCOMPUTER
>
> I attempt to ping LINUXHOST from the 2 M$ boxes and get the
> same error. Now, I have Sygate Personal Firewalls on each of
> the M$ boxes, but I've tried pinging them with the firewalls
> disabled and still get the same error.  I CAN, however, ping
> the 2 Win 98 boxes from each other.

Pinging a Windows peer from Linux by its NetBIOS name usually 
doesn't automatically "just work".  Getting Linux to 
automatically resolve hostnames through NetBIOS requires 
installing one or two NSS modules included with samba and 
fiddling with glibc's /etc/nsswitch.conf file.  At this point, 
this isn't something you should worry about; it can come 
later...

...For now, just make sure your Linux box can ping peers by IP 
address, and make sure smbclient can connect to the Windows 
peers.  Then use nmblookup to manually test NetBIOS name 
resolution (without making it automatic at this point).

-- 
Kelledin
"If a server crashes in a server farm and no one pings it, does 
it still cost four figures to fix?"