Why FreeNAS SMB broadcasts not seen by windows ?

[Dave Genton]

Curious as to why SMB broadcasts by Samba on FreeNAS are not discovered by Windows devices. Even within my AD Domain Controller WINS server I had to add FreeNAS as a static entry because WINS never learns that FreeNAS exists on the same vlan/subnet. I have recently put FreeNAS on a single VLAN with a newly built Active Directory domain controller to do some single-sign on testing with AD after failing to get Open Directory and FreeNAS work authenticate after a year and a half. So even adding an AD DC I otherwise have no use for to the mix seems much, I just want single-sign on and freenas to co-exist and function yet the AD server never even discovers the servers in WINS which is disturbing. I added the static entry but windows devices still have issues and wont always connect or even find freenas servers, I have 2 on that subnet now, one virtual and one physical server.

OSX devices always connect via SMB using the finder 'connect' button and windows works if I manually add it, most of the time. But if its broadcasting why is it not picked up and seen like all else ?? I've changed versioning and all I know to do, hoping someone knows the answer or fix. Between both Apple and Microsoft kerberos setups I can get both to work consistently, but consistently FreeNAS has issues with both. FreeNAS does prefer and work better on MS AD side by far having to give up on Open Directory binding and kerberos altogether. Will bind, but authentication and access to files breaks never to work properly until unbind happens.

thanks in advance
dave

 

[m0nkey_]

Wow, WINS? Taking me back to the NT4 days with that! :p

You may need to specify in the SMB config to use a WINS server. In the auxiliary parameters you can specify:

Code:

wins server = x.x.x.x

Obviously replacing x.x.x.x with your WINS IP address.

You may want to consider switching to DNS, instead of WINS, as this will allow for better name resolution and hopefully no more tombstones.

 

[Dave Genton]

Wow, WINS? Taking me back to the NT4 days with that! :p

You may need to specify in the SMB config to use a WINS server. In the auxiliary parameters you can specify:

Code:

wins server = x.x.x.x

Obviously replacing x.x.x.x with your WINS IP address.

You may want to consider switching to DNS, instead of WINS, as this will allow for better name resolution and hopefully no more tombstones.

Thanks that aux parameter is what I think I was looking for to see if it advertised to wins so at least someone sees freenas.

I have DNS servers besides active directory used here, they including service records and its always been rock solid, but again since back to testing single-sign-on with freenas to OSX clients its causing me to look down many paths as to why that server cannot be found in windows or OSX as it should be advertised.

So mostly curious as to why freenas is not broadcasting and seen like all other servers are both in windows and OSX... plus you know its not resolution based when you try it using IP address and still get same errors..."There is a problem connecting to the server "FreeNAS" 'The server may not exist or it is unavailable at this time. Check the server name or IP address, check your network connection, and then try again.'

Networking is far from new to me and this data center lab works as designed with this one exception, integrating FreeNAS into it to use kerberos authentication. Only now have I attempted using Active Directory with windows realizing macOS and Open Directory will never be sound. At least I had a domain controller already in this data center due to vmware and vCenter using single-sign-on via AD only. Unless there is an easier way to publish storage to users on FreeNAS boxes with SSO, besides hosting it on Windows 2012 R2 as Shares from a FreeNAS based iSCSI LUN..... unless FreeNAS, Windows Server, and client are all using SMB 3.x the redirect wont work allowing direct client to FreeNAS held share read/writes etc...all clients are OS X so smb 2 for now.