DSfW: NetBIOS Name and Wins

  • 7012934
  • 24-Jul-2013
  • 16-Dec-2013

Environment

Novell Open Enterprise Server OES11.1 (OES 11 SP1) 
Domain Services for Windows
DSFW

Situation

Unable to retrieve netbios name

/opt/novell/xad/sbin/provision -q --query domain.lan | grep -i 'NetBIOS Name:' does not return the netbios name

/usr/bin/rpcclient -k  localhost -c dsroledominfo  does not return "Machine Role = 5, Directory Services is running, Domain is in native mode."

How to enable Wins

How to prevent duplicate workstation names within the DSfW domain

Resolution

If NetBIOS is needed, enabling wins support will help provide a more robust and stable NetBIOS Name resolution

Wins can provide notification when joining a workstation to the domain that the workstation name already exists, thus preventing workstations with duplicated names in the domain (see TID 7006851) 

Enabling Wins Support

 
In the [Global] section of the /etc/samba/smb.conf add
wins support = yes

The order or resolution can also be specified by using name resolve order.
example:
wins support=yes
name resolve order = wins hosts bcast lmhost

Do this only one one DSfW server on the network.  Only one server can cache the WINS database per subnet or network because this database can not be replicated.
WINS is not routable so if there are two or more networks, enable one server per network or use the proxy option to forward WINS request.  Do NOT Enable Two or More Servers on the SAME Network or Subnet.
If there is a DSfW server on another network or subnet, wins proxy can be used.  The DSfW server on another network can forward any name resolution request to the wins server.
To do this add in the [Global] section of the smb.conf

wins server = <ip address of wins server>       #do not put <> around the ip address.
wins proxy = yes

For DSfW servers or samba servers that are not WINS servers on the same network, specify the WINS server in the [Global] section of the smb.conf

wins server = <ip address of wins server>      #do not put <> around the ip address.

For Novell Cifs add the wins server in the WINS IP Address parameter in the cifs configuration.