[CentOS] WINS server (nmbd) puzzle

Tue Sep 6 18:09:32 UTC 2011
Kenneth Porter <shiva at sewingwitch.com>

--On Tuesday, September 06, 2011 6:50 AM -0700 Craig White 
<craigwhite at azapple.com> wrote:

> do you have 'wins support = yes' in your smb.conf on the system that is
> supposed to be the wins server?

Yes.

> Is this system running backuppc a different computer? If so, does it
> have 'wins server = $IP.Address.Of.WINS_Server' ? in smb.conf?

Same computer is running BackupPC.

> Do all WinXP systems use the ip address for this system as the wins
> server?
>
> Are they all on the same network/subnet?

Yes. Same host is also the DHCP server for the subnet and provides the WINS 
value to all clients, and I can see it set on the XP client.

> What is the 'os level' of this wins server?  Is it higher than 32? (I'd
> probably make it > 64)

That setting I wasn't aware of. I'll change that.

> Did you examine the wins.tdb by using tdbdump?

That might be an issue. I can't find a wins.tdb in /var/lib/samba.

> Are you aware that elections take 15 minutes? If you actually restart
> the nmbd process on your samba based wins server, you need to wait to
> get a browsing list.

Oddly, when I restart samba, I see in nmbd.log:

[2011/09/06 11:00:24, 4] nmbd/nmbd_winsserver.c:wins_write_database(2353)
  wins_write_database: Dump of WINS name list.

And a long list of client names. But "nmblookup -U 127.0.0.1 [clientname]" 
tells me that name isn't found, for any of the clients seen in the list.

Could this be workgroup-related? I have both an AD domain and a workgroup 
on the subnet, plus customer and vendor machines with their own workgroups.