Laine Stump
2001-Oct-18 10:50 UTC
browselist visibility problem with Win2k (but not 9x/ME/NT) dialup clients
This isn't a Samba problem, but is a problem that would be seen by people attempting to do SMB file sharing while avoiding the use of MS servers, so I'm hoping someone on htis list has seen/solved the problem before me. When I connect a WIN9x/ME/NT machine to my network via a dialup connection, as long as they have a WINS server setting, they are able to browse the network neighborhood, and the names of the clients themselves show up on the domain/workgroup browselist. However, when I connect a Win2k machine via dialup, unless the dialup server itself is a Windows (NT or 2k) machine that is a member of the same domain/workgroup, the client's name never shows up on the domain/workgroup browselist. In spite of this, the dialup client can browse the neighborhood, and other machines on the network can connect to this client machine by name as long as they know the name (eg "Find Computer" works). I have witnessed this problem (and the associated success when the dialup server is a Windows box that is a member of the domain) both on a domain controlled by a Win2k server, as well as on a workgroup that has a Samba server as its master. When I installed the Win2k networking utilities option on the client and ran the browstat program, I found that it gives an error when I attempt to request netbios info for the dialup interface. This leads me to believe that there is "something special" happening when the dialup client and server are Windows; I just don't know what that "something special" may be :-/ Is anyone aware of some simple method of getting these Win2k dialup clients to show up in the browselist? Maybe a small utility program to run on the client that sends the proper advertisement packets (since Windows seems unwilling to do so). I said code doesn't exist, anybody want to write it?