Samba problem needs translation

[Craig White]

On Fri, 2006-03-10 at 20:46 +0000, Anne Wilson wrote:
> On Friday 10 March 2006 20:30, Craig White wrote:
> 
> > I probably would...it settles the election issues. If there are other
> > samba servers, you 'might' want to set them to use 'wins server =
> > ip_addr_of_samba_based_wins_server'
> >
> > I should point out though that man smb.conf /wins support
> > recommends that you not even bother turning it on for a single subnet at
> > all. Thus, don't go by me...I ALWAYS have it turned on but I ALWAYS use
> > domain logons, roaming profiles, etc...the things that make a Windows
> > network more robust and it's easiest for users if they can simply go to
> > 'My Network Places' and browse the network quickly/smoothly.
> >
> > There is another option *if* you have only WinNT, Win2K, WinXP type
> > Windows systems (i.e. no Win95/Win98/WinME) and that is not to use any
> > NetBIOS at all...turn off netbios on all the Windows systems and remove
> > the WINS support entry and then all name resolution should be done
> > through a local DNS server. WINS and browser elections and the like are
> > all about NetBIOS and with NetBIOS completely shut off...that ends the
> > discussion altogether. That would be the quieter/faster method but
> > probably more work to set up.
> >
> There's a lot to think about there, Craig.  Tomorrow I'll start with the 
> dual-boot laptop and take a look at these issues.  I think there is one Win98 
> box sporadically used, but I can probably get that out of the picture this 
> weekend.
> 
> This is a 3-generation family LAN, so necessarily family politics have to be 
> considered.  I doubt if you would be happy if your mother-in-law wanted to 
> change something on your box when you feel that you don't have a problem ;-)  
> That being the position, I'm not sure that I will be able to do anything 
> about the W2K box.  I'd love to get my hands on it - I'm sure that it is 
> hugely misconfigured, but I have to accept reality.
----
computers and politics - hmmm...strange bedfellows ;-)

I find that things are easiest when all 'workstations' use DHCP and I
can make changes to dhcp which are automatically loaded at startup on
the workstation machines (be they windows/macs/linux), then you can
insert things like netbios-server (WINS) into their configuration
without going to each machine and actually manually configuring it.

It's hard to justify taking the time and energy to remove NetBIOS on all
the various systems and I probably wouldn't bother with it myself, and I
suggested it merely because it is an option. 

Craig