Multiple WINS Servers in Samba

[Ty Roberts]

Does anyone know if it is possible to specify Multiple WINS servers with Samba? We only specify our main server now and are getting timeouts in out NMBD log, which I think is causing users to experience timeouts. Could I seperate the IPs with Commas?? Any input on this would be greatly appreciated!!

[2004/07/02 10:00:30, 2] nmbd/nmbd_nameregister.c:(198)
register_name_timeout_response: WINS server at address 10.10.0.14 is not responding.


Thanks

[Darren Prior]

Hi Ty,

There's no mention of being able to use multiple WINS servers in the documentation: /opt/samba/docs/textdocs/BROWSING.txt or in smb.conf.

regards,

Darren.

[Ty Roberts]

well in addition to my previous question, do you think that those errors would cause the samba server to have some problems accepting connections??

[Darren Prior]

I think it depends on how those connections are made - I believe WINS is only related to browsing.

Is this CIFS or Samba? Which version are you running?

regards,

Darren.

[Ty Roberts]

THis is Samba version 2.2.8a. What I am experiencing is an EDI server that both reads and writes files to a mapped drive. It seems to almost hang for a while, not able to grab a connection, and then it busts through and proceedes. When I am made aware of this problem I test by just trying to browse to the machine with a \\server_name from the windows command line and often get a "Network Path Not Found" error. These WINS errors are the only things I have to go on at this point.

[Darren Prior]

Rather than browsing to the share, you could try mapping it directly and seeing if you have the same problem and get the same error.

My other suggestion would be to turn up the debug level (perhaps only for one client) and looking through to see what happened before the hang.

regards,

Darren.

[Ty Roberts]

Can I turn up the debug for just one client?? If so how do I do that and can I get samba to write that client's messages to a seperate file???

That would be of a great help!

[Jeff_Traigle]

Those timeouts will certainly cause problems if they happen long enough that the Samba server's name becomes unregistered from WINS. Unfortunately, Samba does not support more than one IP address for the wins server entry so you can't have a backup defined as a WIndows system does. (This is true in 2.2.8a... don't know if they've changed that in 3.0.) WINS is not exclusively for browsing, however. It's for name resolution. there are browser setting in Samba to deal with the browse list negotiations. If WINS is working and no browsing is configured, you can still access the shares through UNCs. You can always try pointing Samba to the backup WINS server to see if that helps... it might be less utilized so it won't timeout.

[Darren Prior · Accepted solution]

In the global section of smb.conf insert this line:

include=/tmp/smb.conf.%m

Then create a file called /tmp/smb.conf. where the bit is the NetBIOS name of the client you want to monitor. Enter the following lines:

log file = /log.%m
log level =

When any client next connects Samba will look for a file called /tmp/smb.conf. but it will only find one for the single client you are interested in. For this client it will raise the debug level and put the debug data into the specified file. Debug levels go as high as 10, but this _will_ slow your system down. Please see the smb.conf man page for more info.

regards,

Darren.