Name resolution with the Samba Client

[Herwig Bauernfeind]

It appears we are wasting quite some time during connection because of several shortcomings of our client:

The default order of attempts to resolve names is according to smb.conf defaults for Samba:

	name resolve order = lmhosts wins host bcast

• First attempt: Try to parse lmhosts file. This is usually not there on the client.
• Second attempt: Try the WINS server. This is usually not configured on the client. Requires 1 sec (measured in client log) to find or timeout.
• Third attempt: This should work on any TCP/IP network.
• Fourth attempt: Broadcast, this is slow anyway and a last resort.

This has several implications:

• the order of attempts should be configurable in the client.
• do we have means to automatically determine the WINS server in the network? (DHCP job!), an entry for that can be added the client's smb.conf.
• the presence of a proper LMHosts file does speed up connection in the current situation.

[Herwig Bauernfeind]

EVFSGUI 2.5 is able to address this problem (also for Netdrive).