samba - Sep 2004 - Mixed Network Issues

Howdy Super Samba Subscribers!

	I'm looking for a little advice on trouble-shooting our network.  We 
have several large unix partitions that are shared via samba and act as 
our central file stores.  Most of our development machines are Linux or 
Unix systems.  Some of our business people use mixed flavors of 
Windows.   Mostly Windows XP however we have a few older Windows OSs as 
well.
	We have had few problems for the past five or six months.  However 
last week something strange happen.  One Windows XP system, 2 Windows 
98 systems, and a Mac OS X system decided that they can no longer view 
the network.  They don't see each other or other systems.  They also 
don't see the samba partitions.  Most all of the other Windows XP 
systems are still fine.  The Mac OS X system can still mount specific 
samba shares, but can't browse to see that they are available.
	The only thing I know of that changed around the time of the problems, 
was the addition of a new Windows XP system to the network.  Nothing 
seemed weird about its setup and configuration, and it has no problems 
with the current networking.
	Obviously I can't expect anyone on this list to know exactly what my 
problem is, but I was hoping to get some advice on how to troubleshoot 
this situation.  How should I go about attempting to diagnose the 
problem??

Jim Beard
counterclaim.com, Inc
http://www.counterclaim.com
http://openefm.sourceforge.net
(800) 264-8145

On Sep 24, 2004, at 11:15 AM, Jason Balicki wrote:
>
> what you've tried.
Mainly I have spent time verifying that the windows network settings 
seem correct.  I have made sure that everyone is in the same work 
group, etc...  I haven't spent a lot of time debugging this issue since 
I'm not sure what would be the most effective way to address it.
> your version of Samba.
Version 2.2.7a
> your network topology / network hardware.
It's a pretty small network.  Our DSL feeds into a router, the router 
handles DHCP for our network devices.  We have two central switches, 
the first handles all our workstations, the second switch is behind the 
first switch and handles all our servers.  Our servers have static IPs 
while our workstations get them from the DHCP server.
> It *sounds* like a switch died.  Or the
> new XP box grabbed an IP that belongs to the
> Samba server.
Most of our workstations, 70% or so, are working fine with our servers. 
  We have at least 5 XP systems that have no problems seeing our samba 
shares and the rest of our network.  None of the Linux machines are 
having any networking issues.  Also, the machines that DO NOT see the 
samba shares or the other networked machines DO see the Internet and 
can browse to our local Intranet-website.

The newer XP machine seemed to be given an acceptable IP that would not 
conflict with our other devices.

Thanks!

Jim Beard
counterclaim.com, Inc
http://www.counterclaim.com
http://openefm.sourceforge.net
(800) 264-8145