Running Samba on a WAN

[David Owens_1]

Does anyone know if Samba will work on a WAN? I now have Samba running in one building using multiple networks and subnets but when I go to another site it will not connect to the Samba server. I can see the Samba server in the network neighborhood but I get an error message when double clicking the icon. Maybe there is a parameter that must be set in the smb.conf file.


David Owens
Ingersoll-Rand

[harry d brown jr]

What is the error message you are receiving? Providing you have a route to the samba server and the ports are open across the routers, then you should be set.

live free or die
harry

[harry d brown jr]

David,

have you looked at this document?

http://samba.nip.nl/samba/docs/man/smb.conf.5.html

live free or die
harry

[Craig Rants]

Are there any firewall or router rules that would not allow tcp/port 139 access through your WAN?

Also here is a good Samba link, may answer some questions.

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/samba/chapter/book

Good Luck,
C

[David Owens_1]

The error messages I am getting are as follows.

1. When opening network neighborhood and double clicking the Samba_server icon I get:
\\Samba_server is not accessible.
The network path was not found.

2. When right clicking the icon and selecting properties I get:
The server Samba_server could not be found on the network.


Any help would be appreciated.


Thanks,
David Owens
Ingersoll-Rand

[Wodisch]

Hello,

your "fault" is using M$ ideas on a WAN: SMB (Server Message Block) was intended for LANs only!
Hence they use a lot of broadcasts, and your WAN-setup (read: routers) do NOT route those (and they should not, in my opinion). But then, without broadcasts, how would your station "learn" about the existence of the Samba-server?
This is the time to configure your "Computer Browsers", e.g. by using (argh) "WINS"...

Sorry,
Wodisch

[David Owens_1]

All,

I was able to get this working. First, I reluctantly configured WINS with no success. I still got the same error messages when selecting Samba_server from network neighborhood.
Next, I decided to bypass all this and just try mapping a network drive using the IP address of the Samba server. Instead of mapping \\Samba_server\share, I used \\IP_Address\share and it works fine. So, even though SMB is blocked through our routers, TCP/IP still works.
Does anyone see any problems with this scenario?


David Owens
Ingersoll-Rand

[Wodisch]

Hello David,

it is not SMB that is blocked, but broadcasts. And your problem is only the name resolution - you could overcome that with proper entries in the clients "LMhosts" file, or by configuring them to use the WINS server (and telling Samba to announce itself to WINS).

Just to clarify,
Wodisch