Redhat 7.1/Windows 2K Prof Dual Boot problem

[emcc]

We have a dual boot machine with Windows 2K (professional)and Redhat 7.1 using Partition Magic. The machine is set up to boot into Windows. The problem we are having is intermittent but sometimes when going out of Windows into Linux and then booting back into Windows the machine drops off of our Windows workgroup.

We're not sure which part of this setup is causing the problem...??? Has anyone else had this problem?

 

[fluid11]

I'm not sure if this is correct or not, but I thought I read somewhere that the hostname of the Linux and Windows workstations can't be the same on a dual boot. Can someone confirm this?

 

[ifincham]

Hi,















What drops off ? The linux or W2K ? Assuming you have samba on the redhat, it may be a browsing issue because perhaps you have the same netbiosname for each instance but the shares are different. Hence another client getting browse info from the master / local browser gets wrong information. Or maybe you have the samba setup to act as master browser and there are temporary browse problems when its shutdown and another machine takes over.















Difficult to say without more info. Is is a peer-to-peer network or is there a domain controller and, if so, is that a M$ server or samba ? Are you using WINS or samba's nmbd equivalent ? Also, how is samba configured - as PDC, preferred master, etc ? What do you have for netbiosname, workgroups, etc in /etc/samba/smb.conf - i.e. these bits ?















[global]







workgroup = SAMBA







netbios name = REDHAT1







wins support = Yes







domain master = Yes
local master = yes







domain logons = Yes












If you only occasionally have the samba running it would be best to set all the above yes answers to 'no' and make sure the netbiosname is different to the 'computer name' in the W2K network config.












Also have a look at this bit of the O'reilly samba book on browsing -->

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/samba/chapter/ch05.html

Regards

 

[emcc]

This particular machine, let's call it PC1, has both Redhat and Windows 2K installed on it. Since Samba is not installed on this machine I'm not sure if Samba is an issue here since the user is not trying to look at files over the network. He is just going out of Windows to work in Linux on his local machine, then rebooting the machine to go back into Windows. When he goes back into Windows, his machine, PC1, no longer exists in the Windows workgroup. This is a very simple peer to peer network consisting of PC1, PC2, PC3 & PC4. The rest of the PC's can still see and access each other just fine.

I'm fairly new at this so bear with me if I seem to be missing your point...

 

[fluid11]

What are the NetBIOS names of the Windows and Linux machines? Are they both called PC1? If so, that could be your problem. Just rename one or both of them.

ChrisP

 

[ifincham]

Hi,

I can't see how this could happen unless the linux box has samba installed and active. You can check from a command prompt (xterm) with :

$ rpm -q samba
$ /sbin/chkconfig --list smb

If the latter comes back with a line with ons and offs (with on at 3 and 5) then samba would indeed be running. By default its netbiosname would be the same as the hostname.

The way windows networking works is that there are suffixes to the netbiosname that indicate the capabilities / role of a given computer (

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q163/4/09.ASP).

Included in these are 'browsers' and when a workstation browses the network neighborhood it is actually talking to a 'browser' machine that collects info on shares from the other machines. So, if a machine 'disappears' it really means there is no information at that point of time with the master browser. The question is why would it take a longtime after reboot to get on the browse list ?

I can't think of any way that running linux on the same box would affect the windows network browsing unless samba was involved.

http://www.duxcw.com/faq/network/bm.htm

Regards

 

[emcc]

Just to follow up......our user's network connections have reappeared without our intervention. So, for now, we aren't making any changes.

Thanks for all of your advice, though - I'm keeping it just in case the problem reappears!