Samba share disappearing

[Clemens van Everdingen]

Hi,

I have three samba shares on my linux box RH 7.0.
Today for the second time a complete directory on my linux box disappeared.
Anyone seen this before ?

Thanks.
Clemens

[harry d brown jr]

Have you thought about upgrading?

live free or die
harry

[Martin Burnett_2]

Hello,

Something to try is to set up the Windows broadcast address on your local network, and tell samba to announce to the address, i.e.

route add host 255.255.255.255 eth1

And in your smb.conf, it is something like:

remote announce = 255.255.255.255

Have you set the parameter "domain master = yes" in your smb.conf file. Don't do that if the WinNT machine on your network is already a Domain Controller for the domain in which you put Samba.

Check also that you don't have NetBEUI of NetBIOS on top of IPX/SPX running on
your Windows machines. This can break the browsing (at least make Linux - which only use TCP/IP - disappear ).

If your are still able to connect to the server when it is not visible, this means that you don't have a Name resolution problem.

I have been able to solve it by making my Samba
server the master browser, domain master and preferred master etc. The fault on mine when
checking the /var/log/samba/log.nmb log was that, even though my Linux box was set for a higher OS level, it was continuously forcing browse elections and losing them to a Windows box which subsequently executed an LM announce that the Samba server couldn't understand. Changing the setting in WinXX from 'Auto' to 'No' did the trick. Also check the log.smb for clues.

In the windows world the Computer Browser service lets you track servers that are active on the network with a minimum of network overhead. It consists of two components on a Windows NT or Windows NT Advanced Server computer.

The User Mode component is the Browser, which is part of the LAN Manager Server service. This portion is responsible for maintaining the browse list, remoting the NetServerEnum API, and managing the computer's role as a Browser (or non-Browser).

Samba appears to force browser elections in a way that is incompatible with the normal Windows browser election process. That is, by issuing election criteria guaranteeing it will win the election and become the domain master browser. The IsDomainMaster registry setting still cannot force the Windows computer to be the master browser.

Of course it always help to have a relatively up to date OS and app version 8-)

Thanks for participating in the forums,

Martin
Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and reboot. Order shall return.

[Clemens van Everdingen]

Martin,

Sorry for the confusing part of samba.
I really meant a complete directory was gone on the linux box.
I found this out because my samba share was not working. Checking out on the linux side learnt that the directory was really gone.

I have checked all log files but could not find a clue.
No other users on the box, timestamp of the main directory was 13:31 04/04/2002.

Any suggestions ?

[Bill Thorsteinson]

Do you have a cleanup script running under crontab. Thinks like 'core', 'junk', files under temp, and other things can get removed. Look for crontab entryies starting at about 30 minutes after the hour.

[Clemens van Everdingen]

Hi,

No cleanups are running from cron.
All logfiles are checked. etc.

Thanks
Clemens

[Mark Fenton]

Must have been removed by someone -- gremlins?