FreeNAS not seen on windows network

[avalon60]

I rebuilt my FreeNAS server the other week and it was working fine with windows shares being seen etc.
Today I replaced 2 disks from within FreeNAS GUI. The box was shutdown for a while as I had my lunch in between time before the FreeNAS bos was booted back up again. Now it is not seen on a windows network at all. I have rebooted all the windows machines as well as the FreeNAS server several times, but still no shares are seen.

I can ping the FreeNAS server from any windows machine, and also can ping any windows machine from the FreeNAS server.
Doing this in a windows search bar: \\Freenas\WinShare , and it just says windows can't find freeNAS.
I have checked all the permissions and nothing has changed there.

The windows machines are all windows 10, and network discovery is turned on, so they can see each other.

Any ideas anyone as I have spent hours on this and getting nowhere

 

[anodos]

Can you connect by ip-address? \\<ip>

 

[avalon60]

Well it's a bit hit and miss at the moment. The FreeNAS box is now showing up in the list of windows network, but it is not accessible. I have yet again checked the permissions, but I can't even see the shares under the FREENAS box

 

[avalon60]

Update: I detached the volumes and removed the cif shares, then added them back again one by one, and now FreeNAS and my shares are visible again in windows network. I have no idea at all why the cif shares were not visible before as they were some 2 hours ealier.

 

[avalon60]

Further Update: freenas is not available in windows networking again.
I got it working ok last night, and now it isn't, aaargh! Why?

 

[anodos]

Netbios name resolution has never worked well. That's why people either (1) set up local DNS or (2) use ip-addresses.
A couple of things that might help:
1) set FreeNAS as the "preferred master"
2) make sure that no other samba servers on the network (often these can take the form of embedded linux devices or Linux desktops) are configured as preferred master.

After you do (1) - (2), reboot things, watch a show on netflix, and then check if the FreeNAS server has reappeared.

 

[avalon60]

Thanks but how and where do I set FreeNAS as the preferred master?
There are no other samba servers , to the best of my knowledge, on my home network.

 

[Nick2253]

http://doc.freenas.org/9.10/freenas_services.html#cifs

 

[avalon60]

So preferred master is when the checkbox is ticked on Local Master???

 

[Nick2253]

Yup.

 

[avalon60]

Yup.

Well it was already ticked, so we'll see how it goes. To be honest I never had any problems with earlier versions of FreeNAS, and it seems to be a common problem when I googled dhpserver failed to start. I saw a very similar message at times when FreeNAS was booting up.
Anyway, Its ok now, so fingers crossed. Thanks

 

[anodos]

Well it was already ticked, so we'll see how it goes. To be honest I never had any problems with earlier versions of FreeNAS, and it seems to be a common problem when I googled dhpserver failed to start. I saw a very similar message at times when FreeNAS was booting up.
Anyway, Its ok now, so fingers crossed. Thanks

Actually 'local master' is a separate parameter in samba. Leave it checked. To set a samba server as preferred master, you need to add the auxiliary parameter "preferred master = yes" under 'services' -> 'CIFS'

 

[avalon60]

Just done that now, thanks

 

[anodos]

Just done that now, thanks

In case you're curious, "preferred master = yes" causes the FreeNAS server to force a netbios master browser election to happen when the server's nmbd service starts. It also sets the server's OS level high enough that it should win the election. This should cause the FreeNAS server to appear under "network" on computers that are members of its workgroup (except when it doesn't). Note that you shouldn't have more than one "preferred master" on your network. Sometimes maintainers of small / specialized linux distros don't know samba very well and set bizarre defaults in their smb.conf file. This can cause an excessive amount of netbios traffic and computers to inexplicably disappear, and so it's probably worth taking a close look at your *nix systems.