SlackwareThis Forum is for the discussion of Slackware Linux.
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
I regularly setup Samba servers for mixed networks, and it's more or less routine. Usually this means that the Samba server also takes care of DHCP and DNS (using Dnsmasq), and before fine-tuning Samba, I make sure that all hosts can be reached by their respective hostnames.
Now I have a special use case, and I wonder if it's possible to setup a Samba server in a network where hosts can not necessarily be reached by their hostnames. The Samba server and the backup server have static IP addresses outside the DHCP range, but other than that, no local DNS is configured.
Sure. Pretty sure you'll be able to reach the samba server by its netbios name without local dns. If I recall, the samba server will broadcast it and smb clients will be able to use it. (Or clients can browse the server by using the server ip of course.) Sorry if I'm not understanding the question.
You can also access SAMBA shares directly via IP address. Or, as I do on my DHCP/DNS router, assign a host name to the reserved, static IP. My network is a mix of DHCP and static IP assignments and every box has a human readable name.
[global]
......
os level = 33
local master = yes
domain master = yes
preferred master = yes
wins support = yes
dns proxy = no
If you use dhcp to configure the clients you should also specify the netbios server option in your dhcpd conf. If you don't, you will have to tell each client manually where the wins server is.
Last edited by Gerard Lally; 02-01-2017 at 01:02 PM.
@kikinovak - I'm interested whether workstations did indeed find the samba server without local dns services?
First of all, thanks everybody for your suggestions. I found a solution where I could setup a sane DNS in this network, so I won't have to experiment without hostnames.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.