Samba HA cluster - Mounting to NT

[Damien Lass]

Currently I have configured a HA package for samba between two HP-UX 11.0 servers. I am able to successfully failover between the two servers as well as map the shared filesystem in my NT environment. My problem exists in the naming convention I am using to map the filesystem to the NT environment. My objective is to map the HA filesystem via the samba PACKAGE_NAME or package IP address, NOT the server name the package is running on.

I have added the PACKAGE_NAME and IP address to the DNS and am able to ping both the name and IP from the NT server where I am attemping the mapping. I have searched much of the online samba documentation and have read the /opt/samba/HA/README.txt file. Does anybody have the answer that I might be looking for? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

- Damien

[harry d brown jr]

Damien,

Are you looking for something like this:

http://www.ifost.org.au/Documents/serviceguard/node47.html


live free or die
harry

[Damien Lass]

Harry - No, I believe I have the package configuration file set up properly. I am looking for verification and instructions on how to map a HP-UX filesystem to an NT server by way of the PACKAGE_NAME or IP address of my samba package. Any ideas?

[Robert Gamble]

Damein,

You could do a search of this site for CIFS.
See: http://docs.hp.com/cgi-bin/fsearch/framedisplay?top=/hpux/onlinedocs/B8725-90003/B8725-90003_top.html&con=/hpux/onlinedocs/B8725-90003/00/00/5-con.html&toc=/hpux/onlinedocs/B8725-90003/00/00/5-toc.html&searchterms=CIFS&queryid=20020416-084602

Another thread that discusses your issue (but doesn't solve it) is: http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x15bd119c3420d411b66300108302854d,00.html

Good Luck!

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Damien,

I'm not sure I understand the exact "problem" you're having. Is it the server switchover not being detected by the windoze systems?
If so this is probably ARP-related. When the HP systems failover the ARP broadcast goes out almost immediately....but how & how quickly the NT system (OR DNS server) picks it up is beyond the HP systems' control. How quickly ARP entries propogate around the network can be quite problematic.
I suspect you may have to set up a service on the NT systems to constantly monitor:
A) the ARP tables to detect the switch & do so on the net device that will pick up the HP's broadcast first OR
B) The exports available on the HP systems.

Or is the problem that the NT systems do nothing, but error out, when the FS failsover in the cluster? This again is beyond the control of the HP systems & would need to be addressed by the NT systems - probably by a service.

If the problem is strictly naming & DNS is properly setup I think I would prefer to use the virtual IP address as opposed to the virtual hostname for no other reason than to take DNS out of the loop. BUT again the ARP tables NEED to be correct, throughout the entire network path, for even this to work. You may (probably will) have to live with some amount of propogation delay.
Get the network admins involved to see if there's anything they can do to speed this up.

Rgds,
Jeff

[Damien Lass]

Jeff - Let me see if I can set this up a little better....

I have two unix servers (PRD and BCK) that are part of a MCSG package called 'SAMBA' with an IP address of X.X.X.X. From this package, I am sharing the filesystem '/comm'. The package is designed to failover from PRD to BCK in the event of a problem with PRD.

The NT server is ABLE to map this share as: '\\PRD\comm' when running on PRD.
On failover of the samba package to BCK, NT server is ABLE to map this share as: '\\BCK\comm'.

Regardless of what server the SAMBA package is running on I have to be able to map the /comm share to NT as follows:
NT share: '\\SAMBA\comm' OR '\\X.X.X.X\comm'

Again, I have the SAMBA package set up in the DNS AND the 'CIFS/Samba server name =SAMBA' in the smb.conf file. Mapping this share is not working as I would have expected it.

Questions: Is this an NT problem or an Unix/samba problem? Does anybody have a solution to this problem?

[Jeff Schussele · Accepted solution]

Damien,

Ok I understand the problem now. Sure sounds like DNS to me - maybe reverse lookup.
Verify DNS client setup on NT systems.

What happens on DNS lookups - especially reverse lookups (by IP)?

What happens when you ping - by name AND by IP

What happens when you traceroute by name & IP?

HTH,
Jeff

[Damien Lass]

Thank you everyone. It was in fact an issue with the DNS server. The issue was resolved on the NT side of things. I appreciate the help!

- Damien