CentOS - Sep 2011 - WINS server (nmbd) puzzle

My client Windows XP boxes are failing to register with my WINS server 
(running nmbd from Samba). I'm puzzled how to figure out what I'm doing 
wrong.

Background: I'm setting up BackupPC to back up my Windows clients using 
rsync. I've installed cwRsync to the clients. BackupPC uses nmblookup to 
find the client's IP address given its Windows NETBIOS name.

I'm distributing the WINS server address via DHCP and see it on the client 
using "ipconfig /all". I can run tcpdump on the server (filtering for
this
client and the NETBIOS port) and see the register/response sequence at UDP 
137:

MULTIHOMED REGISTRATION; REQUEST; UNICAST
REGISTRATION; POSITIVE; RESPONSE; UNICAST
REGISTRATION; REQUEST; UNICAST
REGISTRATION; POSITIVE; RESPONSE; UNICAST

If I signal the nmbd process with SIGHUP to make it dump its table to 
nmbd.log, I don't see client in the list. I do see the server and my 
Windows Active Directory server's records in the list, but no clients.

nmblookup finds the client by broadcast (the client responds with the 
record) but nmblookup -U 127.0.0.1 says there's no record of it. (A query 
for the server's own record finds it, so I know the WINS service is at 
least working to that degree.)

So why is nmbd not remembering client records?

On Sat, 2011-09-03 at 17:51 -0700, Kenneth Porter wrote:
> My client Windows XP boxes are failing to register with my WINS server 
> (running nmbd from Samba). I'm puzzled how to figure out what I'm
doing
> wrong.
> 
> Background: I'm setting up BackupPC to back up my Windows clients using
> rsync. I've installed cwRsync to the clients. BackupPC uses nmblookup
to
> find the client's IP address given its Windows NETBIOS name.
> 
> I'm distributing the WINS server address via DHCP and see it on the
client
> using "ipconfig /all". I can run tcpdump on the server (filtering
for this
> client and the NETBIOS port) and see the register/response sequence at UDP 
> 137:
> 
> MULTIHOMED REGISTRATION; REQUEST; UNICAST
> REGISTRATION; POSITIVE; RESPONSE; UNICAST
> REGISTRATION; REQUEST; UNICAST
> REGISTRATION; POSITIVE; RESPONSE; UNICAST
> 
> If I signal the nmbd process with SIGHUP to make it dump its table to 
> nmbd.log, I don't see client in the list. I do see the server and my 
> Windows Active Directory server's records in the list, but no clients.
> 
> nmblookup finds the client by broadcast (the client responds with the 
> record) but nmblookup -U 127.0.0.1 says there's no record of it. (A
query
> for the server's own record finds it, so I know the WINS service is at 
> least working to that degree.)
> 
> So why is nmbd not remembering client records?
----
do you have 'wins support = yes' in your smb.conf on the system that is
supposed to be the wins server?

Is this system running backuppc a different computer? If so, does it
have 'wins server = $IP.Address.Of.WINS_Server' ? in smb.conf?

Do all WinXP systems use the ip address for this system as the wins
server?

Are they all on the same network/subnet?

What is the 'os level' of this wins server?  Is it higher than 32?
(I'd
probably make it > 64)

Did you examine the wins.tdb by using tdbdump?

Are you aware that elections take 15 minutes? If you actually restart
the nmbd process on your samba based wins server, you need to wait to
get a browsing list.

Craig




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