[Gllug] Network problems

[Bruce Richardson]

On Tue, Jul 24, 2007 at 03:35:31PM +0100, John wrote:
> My small network has all but ceased working. I've had it runnign for
> about 18 months and it was fine until a couple of weeks ago. I've
> managed to stagger through until now with all kinds of workarounds, but
> I really need to get this sorted, so any suggestions would be gratefully
> received.

The subject line for this message is misleading, I think, or at least
too generic to be useful.  You're not having networking problems per se,
you're having problems with some specific services that are on your
network (DNS or Samba or both, by the look of it).  OK, pedantry done
with...

> I've tracked the problem down to IP addresses. None of the SuSE
> machines are picking up the correct IP addresses. For example, PC-G is
> at address 192.168.0.2, but when I type, from PC-A
> 
> smbclient -L PC-G
> 
> I get the response
> 
> Error connecting to 195.238.237.143 (Connection refused)
> 
> I've no idea where 195.238.237.143 comes from. It's nothing to do with
> me, guv. The same happens on the other machines, except that the last
> triplet is 142.

OK, it sounds as if you may have DNS resolution problems.  Check
/etc/resolv.conf on the Linux boxes; is there a "search" or "domain"
line and what does it contain?  Check the DNS settings for the windows
boxes as well.  Also, go to the command line on these boxes and try
resolving the address for PC-G using your cli tool of choice (host, dig,
nslookup or whatever).

> 
> I've got wins defined in the hosts line of /etc/nsswitch.conf, by the
> way, so Samba should be picking up IP addresses from NetBIOS names, and
> was until all this happened.

Hmm.  You don't necessarily need a wins entry in nsswitch, particularly
if your netbios names correspond to the actual hostnames.  Do you have
wins lines in smb.conf?


-- 
Bruce

I must admit that the existence of Disneyland (which I know is real)
proves that we are not living in Judea in AD 50. -- Philip K. Dick
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