Strange LAN Behavior

[Mike A]

On 05/11/2010 05:30 PM, Brian McKee wrote:
> On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 4:25 PM, Mike A <mlnx at mho.com> wrote:
>> I have a LAN with 2 linux, 2 Windows, a printer , and a NAS
>> adapter/disk.  The NAS is essentially a windows/samba share.  My machine
>> also has a USB drive that I share via Samba. The problem is that
>> sometimes my machine doesn't show up and therefore neither does the the
>> USB drive.  When I notice that this has happened, I reboot my linux box
>> and all is well again.
>
> There's no reason to reboot.  I'm not sure why your linux computer 
> doesn't show up - is it sleeping? Or is that USB drive going to sleep 
> and thus disappearing?  Looking at the logs in /var may give a clue.  
> Samba works on broadcasting shares, so if your machine sleeps it may 
> be a while before the share is broadcast again.  The next time you see 
> that, try alt-f2 and type 'gksu service smb restart'  That's a lot 
> less disruptive....
>
>> Also a curiosity, when I bring up Network Servers on my machine(linux),
>> I see all the nodes and a Windows Network folder containing a Workgroup
>> folder. If I open the Wrokgroup folder the nodes appear again.  What the
>> significance of appearing twice.  Window machines only show them once.
>
> Windows only shows you shares that are in the workgroup your computer 
> is assigned to.
> Ubuntu will show those shares at the root level regardless of the 
> workgroup.  It also shows the workgroup and the shares in it.  In 
> other words, it will show more than one workgroup where Windows 
> won't.  It's showing you the same shares twice.


Brian, thanks for you help.  I'll keep an I on it and try smb restart.

Mike