David C. Rankin wrote:
Donald D Henson wrote:
James Knott wrote:
Donald D Henson wrote:
I can't seem to find the answer to the following question, not even in "Samba for Dummies". I guess the question is too simple. Anyway...
Is it okay to have more than one samba server in a given local network?
Or put another way...
Do you need a samba server on each linux machine that wants to serve shares?
Responses appreciated.
You can have multiple servers on the network and any Linux box can be a server. If you're not sharing to Windows systems, you can also use NFS instead of Samba.
I'm trying to use both. I'm using NFS for certain functions that do not require Windows and would like to use Samba for those functions that do. This is doable. Right?
Don,
Did you ever get this sorted out? The big thing with multiple samba boxes to remember that (1) you can only have 1 wins server on the network, and (2) each samba box can either be a wins server or wins client, but not both. To specify a samba box as a wins server, that is controlled in your /etc/samba/smb.conf by:
wins support = yes
and further refined with:
local master = yes os level = 69 domain master = yes preferred master = yes name resolve order = wins lmhosts bcast
For a wins client, you simply eliminate the wins support parameter and define the wins server parameter so the box knows where to look for the browse list:
wins server = 192.168.6.17
and to insure you browse master election comes out the way you want, set the os level lower on your clients:
os level = 57
That will insure your wins clients never win the browse election. As between clients, normal election rules apply, but as long as you master always wins, you don't care about the clients. It just cuts down on chatter in the nmbd log files.
Make sure you don't have a windows server that also considers itself the master. I have forgotten the exact election rules, but if you set your the os level of you master greater than 62, I believe you will always win the browse election. I know setting it at 69 does it for sure.
Have a look at my other post, "More Samba Help", and you can see how confused I still am. I think a simple example would help a lot. -- Don Henson