[KLUG Members] Dancing with Samba and Old Gals

[greenproc]

Mark Jones wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-02-16 at 18:55 -0500, greenproc wrote:
> 
>>I'm not sure I have a clear view of what is happening in your scenario.
>> What, can you succesfully do with your Samba server?  Is the Win98
>>machine the only client that cannot connect?
> 
> 
> Hopefully this will clear things up.  I have 3 WinXP, 1 Win98 and 1 Tivo
> on the network outside of a two servers.  The 3 XP and the Tivo machines
> all talk to the samba server just fine, including some rudimentary
> printing.  It's the Win98 machine that has the problem.  Before the
> samba, it networked with the XP machines just fine.  With the samba
> server, it only sees itself in the "Network Neighborhood"; it doesn't
> see the samba server nor does it see the other XP machines.
> 
> 

I bet it isn't registering it's NetBIOS names with the Samba server, nor
  is it reading/registering with the WINS service you are running on Samba.

You should manually change the NetBIOS node-type in the registry of the
98 machine, and make sure to specify a WINS server (IP of the Samba) in
it's TCP/IP settings.  It's been so long since I've seen the win98
networking options I forget if there's a place to specify a WINS server.

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Netbt\Parameters

There is a DWORD value for NodeType (1 thru 4)

# b-node - Broadcast node.
# p-node - Point-to-point node queries an NBNS name server to resolve
addresses.
# m-node - First uses broadcasts, then falls back to querying an NBNS
name server.
# h-node - The system first attempts to query an NBNS name server, then
falls back to broadcasts if the name server fails. As a last resort, it
will look for the lmhosts file locally.

Try making it an h-node (hybrid, DWORD value 4)

Of course, it sounds like the problem is that it is getting the wrong
NetBIOS node-type option or none at all from the DHCP server. If it's
getting the wrong option from the DHCP server, editing the registry may
not work.  If it isn't getting an option at all -- the manually giving
it one (regedit) may be the fix.

I think your best option is to make your Samba server also a DHCP
server.  The Ubuntu package is called 'dhcp3-server' and there is a
'webmin-dhcpd' package in the "Universe" repository just in case you
don't like to edit text files for some reason and would rather also
install apache and use a web interface for the administration of DHCP.
Just another unecessary vulerability if you ask me -- I'd stick to
editing the text files.

Good luck :)


(More info on node types)
msclient-node-types
<http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;160177>
netbios paramaters for XP
<http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314053>



>>Can you browse Samba shares from on the Samba server?  Are the smbd and
>>nbnd daemons running on the Samba server, and can you verify they are by
>>doing a 'netstat -wutpln' as root?
>>
> 
> Samba appears to be running just fine.  Here is the netstat output:
> tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:445             0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     6823/smbd
> udp        0      0 192.168.15.101:137      0.0.0.0:*                          6820/nmbd
> udp        0      0 0.0.0.0:137             0.0.0.0:*                          6820/nmbd
> udp        0      0 192.168.15.101:138      0.0.0.0:*                          6820/nmbd
> udp        0      0 0.0.0.0:138             0.0.0.0:*                          6820/nmbd
> 
> 
>>If all that checks out, then is there a firewall on the Samba server
>>that could be blocking the nbns and smb ports (135, 137, 139 and 445, I
>>think)?
> 
> No there is no firewall on the server.  All the other machines can see
> it just fine.
> 
> 
>>Personally, I like to skip DHCP on small networks, and do static
>>addressing along with hosts and lmhosts files for name resolution -- 
> 
> 
> I really can't do this because all 3 XP machines are laptops which
> travel quite a bit.
> 
> 
>>If you must
>>have DHCP, then installing it on your Samba server provides you more
>>flexibility -- if the Samba server is going to be up %100 of the time
>>that is.  What distro are you using for the Samba server?
> 
> 
> I am using Ubuntu 5.10.
> 
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