I have a samba domain with a Samba 3.4.x PDC (compiled from source on Solaris 10) and two Samba 3.0.x BDC's (Sun-bundled Samba on Solaris 10.) XP clients use DHCP. When on the LAN, DHCP includes WINS server (the WINS server is one of the Samba 3.0.x machines.)
We also have a VPN for remote client access for Windows XP machines. XP machines could include home PC's (not in the domain) or company laptops (which are in the domain.) The VPN client has a virtual network adapter, which gets an IP address from the corporate DHCP server. The IP address is in the same private class C as the machines on the network. By default the VPN is NOT configured relay Multicast or Windows Netbios Broadcast packets. Also, VPN clients do NOT get a WINS server assigned. I don't actually want VPN users browsing for Windows shares or mapping network drivers over the VPN. VPN is typically for low-bandwidth friendly stuff like RDP, HTTP and e-mail. When on a VPN, you can't go to "My Network Places" and browse for servers.) None-the-less, users found they are able to access (or map) network shares by explicitly using the server name and share (e.g. via the Windows explorer or the "net use" command.) Which brings me to the "problem." When accessing via VPN, users can access the samba 3.0.x BDC's via name. But they can NOT access the PDC by name. They can access via the PDC's IP. All 3 DC's have ports 139 and 445 open. C:\ >net use \\bdc1 The command completed successfully. C:\ >net use \\bdc2 The command completed successfully. C:\ >net use \\pdc1 System error 67 has occurred. The network name cannot be found. C:\ >net use \\192.168.x.y The command completed successfully. My understanding is that XP (and Win 2000/2003) machines are "smart" enough to use DNS look ups to resolve a windows "netbios" name to IP in the case that legacy (archaic) "Netbios" name resolution (WINS, lmhosts, broadcast) methods don't work. In fact this seems to work for any samba or windows machine on the network EXCEPT the Samba 3.4.x PDC. It seems to work for Win 2003 machines, Samba 3.4.x member servers, XP machines, etc. The XP VPN Clients are not using hosts or lmhosts files. Wins is not used over the VPN. All the samba and windows machines on the network are configured to use WINS so I don't think they would respond to netbios broadcast requests looking for a machine by name. I can't see how any configuration option on the PDC would affect how CLIENTS resolve its name (unless I was relying on WINS and the server was not using WINS.) This isn't really a show stopper (and actually I might eventually want to BLOCK windows networking over VPN) but I can't figure out why one server has this problem. Thanks -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/options/samba