[nzlug] samba: puzzled user...

[Robin Sheat]

On Sunday 09 March 2008 22:00:41 Cliff Pratt wrote:
> That accords with what I remember, except that there will be only *one*
> Master Browser for the whole network segment, which knows everything for
> all workgroups,
Not on my network there isn't:
$ smbclient -L dagobert
...
        Server               Comment
        ---------            -------
        DAGOBERT             dagobert server (Samba, Ubuntu)

        Workgroup            Master
        ---------            -------
        FLAT                 DAGOBERT
        MSHOME               LAPTOPCO1
        WORKGROUP            BARRY

You shouldn't end up with multiple masters for a workgroup, unless something 
is wrong. The machine with the highest OS value becomes the master, and if 
there is a tie, an election is held to decide. It's all very democratic, but 
I think with a bias towards the incumbents. I suspect that every master 
caches information about the other ones to make searching faster and to 
minimise traffic (hah, when I plug in to the Otago Uni LAN, I see something 
like 20k/s background chatter on the network, most of which is windows boxes 
talking to each other), but I don't know that for a fact.

> Clients broadcast for the Master Browser so network browsing is 
> restricted to one network segment unless you do some trickery with the
> router between the two network segments.
WINS can let you browse across segments. The searching and so on happens with 
broadcast packets, which aren't routed, but talking to a specific machine is 
done with a regular TCP (maybe UDP) connection, and so is routable. You can 
(and I have, for kicks, in the '98 days) access machines across the internet 
that way especially when they're on dialup and so have a public IP. WINS I 
think has some configuration so it knows how to cross the router. My guess is 
that it talks to another WINS server on the other side, but I know no more 
than that about it.

-- 
Robin <robin at kallisti.net.nz> JabberID: <eythian at jabber.kallisti.net.nz>

Hostes alienigeni me abduxerunt. Qui annus est?

PGP Key 0xA99CEB6D = 5957 6D23 8B16 EFAB FEF8  7175 14D3 6485 A99C EB6D
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