OS X (Panther) Network Browser Question 1

[warchyld]

Greetings,

I have an annoying little problem - not major, but it's gotten under my skin. I have a Win2K AD Domain, that has a few OSX machines on it. On any of the Macs if I go to Go->Connect to Server and then Browse the domain only a couple of the computers (out of about 50) show up in the browser. I have verified the DNS entries, entered my WINS server in the SMB entry in the Directory Access utility, and I've also tried setting up the Active Directory in the Directory Access utility. All have the same result, only a few computers show in the browser. I CAN connect to other machines that don't show by connecting directly to SMB://10.225.0.xxx - they just won't show in the browser. OSX are updated right up to 10.3.7 (some are not up to .7 yet, but same results).

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[dodge20]

What operating systems are you trying to connect to? Are they all OS X? If they are OS 9 that aren't connecting, make sure that the sharing is set to connect over IP. Are the windows (if you have any) showing up?

Dodge20

 

[warchyld]

It's when I try to browse my Win2K domain from the OSX machines. After doing some hunting I've found this thread - it seems like there's been some network browse problems ever since Panther came out, but it doesn't look like it's ever been really fixed.

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=184825

Ohwell, like I said, I CAN connect through smb://computername/, it's just annoying not being able to browse.

Guess I'll just have to wait and see if Apple someday figures out how to get Samba running as good as my Linux box runs it.

 

[dodge20]

I can't get samba to work with OS X very well at all. I keep getting a Unix Executable file for several type of documents. What I ended up doing is installing the new version of apple talk that came out, and that seems to work.

Dodge20

 

[dogcow43]

Warchyld- my experience is that browsing doesn't really work with PC's. Yeah, you would figure it would be easy for Apple to figure out. Oh well.
Dodge20 - As far as I know, Samba doesn't support the resource fork, which tells the mac how to use the file. You can drop those files on an acceptable application and they should open. I think, also, if you put the 3 digit extension on the file, it will have an idea of how to handle it.

-Brett

 

[ObviousTroll]

warchyld -

I run into this a *lot* - I wasted some time digging into it and the problem appears to be which machine is the appointed "master directory".

For some reason, every time someone with a windows laptop VPNs into our network, they end up becoming the master and so my Mac only sees the machines that the laptop knows about.

Why doesn't this affect Windows machines? I'm not sure but I suspect that the Windows boxes do some kind of aggressive search for directory servers when ever you look at network neighborhood. In other words, they look for all directories, not just the current master.

 

[warchyld]

Ahhh - So they're picking up another computer that's declared itself a master browser. Any ideas on how to figure out what the Mac's are using for their browser, or is there a way to force them to look at the DC instead of searching for a browser?

 

[ObviousTroll]

I worked through it with my local Windows admin guy, he did some magic with the "net" command which is how we learned the master browser was getting moved around.

Unfortunately, I haven't found a good answer for looking at the right server - I've got Directory Access configured to point straight at the real wins server, at one point I even got my Mac added to the AD domain but neither really solved the problem - apparently when a machine announces that it's the new boss, that overrides the config file.

 

[macmend]

the best site for all this stuff is

http://www.macwindows.com

more answers can be found at:

http://www.macmend.com