samba - Oct 2003 - Why doesn't my wins.dat list all the LMBs?

My network looks like this:

internet  192.168.0.0/24
router  ----+----+----+----- internal  192.168.5.0/24
            |    |    |      router  ----+-----+------+-
   LNB--->mswin  |    |     (also a      |     |      |
          client |    |      samba       |     |      ....
                 |    |      server)     |     |
              samba   |                  |   samba
      LNB---->linux  samba               |   linux
              WINS   linux             mswin
                                       client<-----LNB

I wanted to know which boxes were the LMBs and the DMB, so I looked
into the wins.dat on the WINS server.  But in wins.dat, I only see one
line that has MSBROWSE in it:

     "^A^B__MSBROWSE__^B#01" 1066639333 255.255.255.255 e4R

Is this supposed to be the DMB?  Why the 255.255.255.255 address?  I
would expect there to be a host address there.

Why aren't the LMBs listed in this file?  The actual LMBs can be found
by running nmblookup on the two subnets:

  # nmblookup -M -B 192.168.0.255 -
  querying ^A^B__MSBROWSE__^B on 192.168.0.255
  192.168.0.13 ^A^B__MSBROWSE__^B<01>
  192.168.0.100 ^A^B__MSBROWSE__^B<01>
  # nmblookup -M -B 192.168.5.255 -
  querying ^A^B__MSBROWSE__^B on 192.168.5.255
  192.168.5.200 ^A^B__MSBROWSE__^B<01>

Shouldn't these be registered by the WINS server?  How can the LNBs
get each others' lists if they can't look up the DMB on the WINS
server?  How can the DMB find the LMBs if it is not listed on the WINS
server?

In fact, the LNBs are NOT getting each others' lists:

  # smbclient -N -L 192.168.5.200 | grep ABCDMEDIA
          ABCDMEDIA            Kickin' Media Repository!
          NOGROUP              ABCDMEDIA
  # smbclient -N -L 192.168.0.13 | grep ABCDMEDIA
  # 

As you can see, the LNB on the .5.0/24 network knows about ABCDMEDIA,
but the LNB on the .0.0/24 network does not.  Obviously something is
not configured right.  Any suggestions?

Dave

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David Wuertele wrote:

| I wanted to know which boxes were the LMBs and the DMB, so I looked
| into the wins.dat on the WINS server.  But in wins.dat, I only see one
| line that has MSBROWSE in it:
|
|      "^A^B__MSBROWSE__^B#01" 1066639333 255.255.255.255 e4R
|
| Is this supposed to be the DMB?

No.  The DMB is workgroup<0x1b>

| Why aren't the LMBs listed in this file?  The actual LMBs
| can be found by running nmblookup on the two subnets:

This is by design.  It's how browsing works.  LMB are never
listed in WINS since there is no need.  BY definition an LMB
is local to a broadcast subnet.  LMB sync with the DMB,
not each other.




cheers, jerry
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