FreeBSD/Samba issue

[Bill Moran]

In response to "Ben House" <bhouse at unifiednetworkservices.ca>:

> I have a situation where we are using a samba file server 3.0.23d  with WINS
> enabled on FreeBSD 5.4.  When the WINS is enabled in Samba the user
> (Windows) PCs are having problems resolving other PCs on the network (using
> NetBIOS), example: pinging "user" from a user PC is resolving to "user.com"
> and returning the external IP.  Removing the reference to the WINS on the PC
> fixes this.  Pinging "user" from the FreeBSD box (with Samba on or off)
> returns the external address to "user.com" also.  Any other FreeBSD box (on
> other LANs) doesn't seem to do this.  Can this be changed?

If I understand your problem correctly ...

Keep in mind that WINS is a system originally designed to compete with DNS.
WINS and DNS do the same thing.  Also, Micrsoft gave up that goat and newer
versions of Windows favor DNS resolution over WINS.  As a result, you're
better off ditching WINS and setting up all your configuration information
in DNS.

If that's not possible, there is a setting on Windows that allows you to
control which is tried first (DNS or WINS), but I seem to remember that
it did not work as advertised.  Keep in mind that different tools in
Windows do things differently: I believe IE will always try DNS first,
where as most DOS tools will always try WINS first.  As a result, you're
probably best off getting rid of WINS altogether.

-- 
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com