Chris,

 

Thanks for the additional help on this.  I was able to make the changes and set my laptop to look at my Linux box as a WINS server.  So now when I perform the following command from the command line I get the following:

 

nmblookup -U 192.168.15.2 -R laptop1

querying laptop1 on 192.168.15.2

192.168.15.155 laptop1<00>

 

That to me means it works and it's finding the IP address for my laptop :)

 

However, there are still issues.  When I try and perform a backup of laptop1 from within the web interface I get the following message:

 

Error: Can't find IP address for laptop1

 

laptop1 is a DHCP host, and I don't know its IP address. I checked the netbios name of 192.168.15.155, and found that that machine is not laptop1.

 

Until I see laptop1 at a particular DHCP address, you can only start this request from the client machine itself.

 

The strange thing is, I was on the client machine at the time and trying to back it up manually from the web interface!

 

I also updated the config file for laptop1 such that NmbLookupFindHostCmd is set to:

 

$nmbLookupPath -R -U 192.168.15.2 $host

 

Feel like I am getting closer to getting this working now that I can at least get success from the nmblookup command.

___________________________________________________________

Dave Williams

Check out our WebOS mobile phone app for the Palm Pre and Pixi:

Golf Caddie by DTW-Consulting, Inc.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Bennett [mailto:chris AT ceegeebee DOT com]
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 7:07 PM
To: dwilliams AT dtw-consulting DOT com; General list for user discussion, questions and support
Subject: Re: [BackupPC-users] Communicating with a windows laptop on my workgroup

 

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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