BackupPC-users

Re: [BackupPC-users] Communicating with a windows laptop on my workgroup

2010-03-18 19:09:03
Subject: Re: [BackupPC-users] Communicating with a windows laptop on my workgroup
From: Chris Bennett <chris AT ceegeebee DOT com>
To: dwilliams AT dtw-consulting DOT com, "General list for user discussion, questions and support" <backuppc-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net>
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:36:52 +1030
Hi there,

> No, it doesn't make sense.  What you want (and need) is a master
> browser, which (on a workgroup, not a Windows domain) is elected
> from computers on the segment.  N.B.:  if you're not on the same
> segment and don't have a domain controller, you can't browse or use
> nmblookup.

WINS was created to work around this, and may help you in this case as
well.

Name resolution in SMB/AD uses three methods:
  - broadcast
  - WINS
  - DNS

The thread has mostly been about getting a master browser working, but
if the two BackupPC & client nodes are on the same segement, broadcast
resolution should work.  The exception might be if your client is not
responding to Netbios broadcast name queries (UDP 137).

So WINS can provide you a central name resolution service (WINS
server) which can respond to name queries on behalf of clients.  The
caveat being the clients need to know to register their name with a
WINS server.  WINS also solves the name resolution between segments
problem.

DHCP can dish out the WINS server setting (ISC dhcp name it
'netbios-name-servers'), but since you're statically allocating an IP
address, you'll need to manually configure the setting.  I found
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v5r4/topic/rzahl/rzahlcfgpcwinsxp.htm
which describes how to do it for Windows XP.

The samba server requires the option
  wins support = yes

Now when you're client boots up, it'll register it's name with the
WINS server.

nbmlookup accepts a -R and -U option.  From the manpage:
  -U <unicast address>
     Do a unicast query to the specified address or host unicast
     address. This option (along with the -R option) is needed to
     query a WINS server.

  -R
     Set the recursion desired bit in the packet to do a recursive
     lookup. This is used when sending a name query to a machine
     running a WINS server and the user wishes to query the names in
     the WINS server. If this bit is unset the normal (broadcast
     responding) NetBIOS processing code on a machine is used instead.
     See RFC1001, RFC1002 for details.

Test first to ensure nmblookup returns the expected result, and then
update backuppc to use the above options when calling nmblookup.

The third resolution method (DNS) is just that: given a bareware name,
append a suffix to the name and send a query to the configured DNS
server.  AD uses this now to replace broadcast and WINS resolution,
coupled with dynamic DNS for clients to register their name to the DNS
server.

So hopefully that can help you to configure things the way you'd like
to - personally, the neatest solution is to setup a DNS server, and
configure your a DNS record for your desktop since it's statically
assigned, but all methods above should work they way their advertised
to work :)

Regards,

Chris Bennett
cgb

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