home network messed up

[hinkbot]

ok. i think this is the strangest computer error i have ever seen..

last night i start anew with rh9. i had samba up and going before last night. so today i decided i should get that back up and going first. on my windows machine earlier today, i was able to look at other network computers. (ie. double-click on the network icon, browse the users, click on a user, and connect to their shared folders).

i installed all rpms for samba, and tried configuring it to hook up to the network. at one point i was able to see the computer on the network, but unable to connect to it. i did more work to try to figure that out.

i don't know what happened, but now the entire network is messed up. i am, along with anyone else hooked up to the network, unable to browse the list of computers hooked up to the network, but if i know the path, i can connect. i dont know how exactly this happened. i presume i messed up something with samba.

on irc i got no help..windows rooms said to go to linux rooms..linux rooms said to go to windows rooms.

my linux computer is rh9, all other computers hooked up to the network are Windows. i dont think it is linux or windows problem though, but then again i don't know.

if anyone could give some background on what they think happend, or maybe someone experienced this sort of problem before. i know this is a linux forum and no help can be given for windows problems, i'm sorta just looking for a finger pointing me in the right direction.

thanks for the help!

[chrism01]

If you've only fooled with your linux box, but all computers on your lan can no longer browse for shares anywhere on the lan, sounds like you've set the linux box up to be the PDC, taking over from the original (presumably MSwin) PDC.
You may even have them both set to the same 'level' . Read Samba docs on PDCs.

[DMR]

chrism01 is on the right track; it definitely sounds like a master browser/browser election conflict. Read up on the OS Level, Preferred Master, and Domain Master options in smb.conf.

If you can't resolve the issue, post your smb.conf file and also tell us which versions of Windows you're running. I remember that machines running Win98 had/have a nasty habit of magically deciding to enable their Master Browser setting, which will cause all sorts of browsing problems if you've already got another Master on the network.

[hinkbot]

all machines are winXP machines.

looking at the smb.conf file and i don't see anything mentioning PDC. it is the standard smb.conf file, no changes made. i reverted it back to as if i just installed rh9.

where would i look in this file for stuff about PDC?

[DMR]

In your Samba config you won't see anything specifically referring to PDCs (Primary Domain Controllers). The OS Level, Preferred Master, and Domain Master options I mentioned in my last post are entries in smb.conf which are (somewhat) related to this. The entire subject is a little deep to get into, but the basic idea is that if you have your Samba box set to perform/provide a network function that one of your Windows machines is already responsible for, there will be conflicts such as you describe. Could you post your smb.conf file please? That will at least let us know if any of your settings on the Samba machine might be causing conflicts with the Win boxes on your network.

One other thing to look into is your security/firewall setup on the Redhat machine. By default, Redhat can configure those settings fairly restrictively (causing network connection problems), so it might be a good idea to either relax the settings or disable them entirely while we sort out the problem.

[hinkbot]

here is my smb.conf file. dont know if it works.