[wellylug] samba server and dhcp

[Michael Dittmer]

Not true. Windows 2000 / 2003 (including server versions) and Windows XP
using DNS as the default lookup. To use netbios, you have to enable it.

If you pass the domain info via dhcp including the DNS info as well, then
you don't need netbios at all, not to mention netbios can be hacked over the
internet if it is being broadcast onto the net like a lot of Win9x PC's do.

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: wellylug-admin at lists.naos.co.nz
[mailto:wellylug-admin at lists.naos.co.nz]On Behalf Of Sam Cannell
Sent: Saturday, 8 May 2004 2:34 p.m.
To: wellylug at lists.naos.co.nz
Subject: RE: [wellylug] samba server and dhcp


This isn't strictly true.

By default, Windows will not use DNS to resolve netbios names - it's a
feature you can enable in the TCP/IP options.

Also if you want to use DNS resolution rather than the other methods of
netbios name resolution, you will need to assign each machine a fixed IP
address and set up a DNS server to handle requests.

The other thing to note is that it's generally not a good idea to use a
domain search list.  The reason is that every dns request is first tried
with each of the domains in the search list _before_ it is attempted on
its own.

For example, if you have the following in your domain search list:

local.fakedomain.co.nz
fakedomain.co.nz

When you try to go to, say, www.google.com, your PC will try to resolve
the following addresses, in this order:

www.google.com.local.fakedomain.co.nz
www.google.com.fakedomain.co.nz
www.google.com

In other words, you're doing three DNS lookups when you should only be
doing one.

To compound this, if your DNS server does not have a fakedomain.co.nz
zone set up, it will attempt to resolve the above names via the standard
DNS fashion.  On a congested or low-speed connection, this can take a
non-trivial amount of time.

Leave the domain search list empty unless you have a damn good reason
for enabling it.  Given that there are other (far simpler) solutions to
getting netbios name resolution working, this is definitely not a damn
good reason. :)

Sam

-----Original Message-----
From: wellylug-admin at lists.naos.co.nz
[mailto:wellylug-admin at lists.naos.co.nz] On Behalf Of Michael Dittmer
Sent: Saturday, 8 May 2004 10:01 a.m.
To: wellylug at lists.naos.co.nz
Subject: RE: [wellylug] samba server and dhcp

Hi Phillip

In your Smoothwall setup did you include a domain suffix (eg:
domain.lan)
for your DHCP server, if not you will need to as this passes the domain
suffix to the Smoothwall DNS server for doing lookups. I had this
problem
here at home when I was testing Smoothwall 2.0 Express.

Also, in your Windows PC, in the network settings you need to add the
domain
suffix as well. Again, I know this from experience.


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