Hi:
I'm trying to create a group of samba/NFS servers.
The NIS/NFS/Automount part has always worked fine. Now I'm trying to
duplicate what automount does w/ DFS.
A single DFS server would be a single point of failure. I need redundant
DFS.
I've configured a pair of samba servers, w/ DFS on each one. Each
machine has a few non-dfs shares referred to by dfs links.
I've configured two DNS "A" records, pointing smbnfs.my.domain to
*both*
IP addresses of these two machines.
Testing confirms that if one of the two machines goes down, after about
a 15-sec timeout, the Win'XP clients will figure it out and switch to
the other server. This means that if a single machine goes down, the DFS
links will still be available. Also, I would still be able to use DFS to
redirect client machines to a new SAMBA server without remapping drives.
My problem is that DFS services under this DNS alias appear to be flakey.
Sometimes the DFS links work fine. Other times, the DFS links stop
working, and if (w/ the XP client) I get right-click/properties on those
folder/links at those times, the DFS tab does not appear under the
folder's properties box.
Other times, if I look at the DFS properties of a link, the name of the
DFS server alias appears instead of the name of the back-end server
that's listed in the msdfs links. (smbnfs.my.domain appears instead of
server1.my.domain)
How can I make the redundant DFS system work?
Or... What other methods could be used to give me SAMBA based redundant
DFS services?
-Bill
