[PLUG] Command line tools to troubleshoot Samba

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Sun Jul 16 19:09:49 UTC 2006


On Sat, 15 Jul 2006 23:15:54 -0700
"Jason R. Martin" <nsxfreddy at gmail.com> dijo:

> > Thanks for the suggestions. Barring some additional brilliant insight,
> > I'm going to wait until someone on the Ubuntu forums figures out what
> > is going on.
> 
> There's one flaw in your logic:
> 
> "Today neither can ping each other, not even using ip address."
> 
> Before screwing around any more with Samba, I would suggest following
> Carlos' advice, and fix your networking.  Samba has nothing to do with
> ping.  Once that is working, then you can worry about the Samba
> install errors.  Hopefully you saved a good copy of your working Samba
> configuration.

Previous to the current difficulty, ping always worked. However, I
misstated something when I said "neither can ping each other." At the
moment it works from the Linux laptop to anyplace on the internet
(e.g., the Comcast DNS server addresses), it works to my two big HP
Laserjets via home ethernet (Jetdirect cards), but doesn't work from
the Linux laptop to the Windows desktop. However, the Windows desktop
can ping everything, including the Linux laptop. So evidently the only
time ping does not work is when the Linux laptop (192.168.1.102) tries
to ping the Windows desktop (192,168.1.100).

In the meantime, someone on the Ubuntu forums pointed out that the
error we are getting when removing and installing Samba has to do with
some links in /etc/rc.X that are incorrect. The poster pointed out that
doing a "remove completely" from Synaptic before doing an install will
clear those out. (Same as --purge.) I tried it and it worked. No more
error messages on removing and installing Samba. Nevertheless, I still
can't see anything on the Windows desktop, nor do I get a ping response
from it.

After much poking around on the Windows desktop, this is what I found:
	IP address: 192.168.1.100
	IP subnet: 255.255.255.0
	Default IP gateway: 192.168.1.1
	DHCP enabled: True
	MAC address: 00:40:F4:60:73:7A

Doing ifconfig on the Linux laptop gives me:
jjj at Devil5:~$ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0F:B0:03:03:86
          inet addr:192.168.1.102  Bcast:192.168.1.255
Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::20f:b0ff:fe03:386/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1492  Metric:1
          RX packets:79679 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:42866 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:104544932 (99.7 MiB)  TX bytes:3290806 (3.1 MiB)
          Interrupt:185 Base address:0x6800
lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:14068 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:14068 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:610620 (596.3 KiB)  TX bytes:610620 (596.3 KiB)

I don't understand why the Linux computer can ping the whole world,
except the Windows desktop.

I've also discovered something else on the Windows desktop. The network
card is a Realtek RTL8139(A). Device Manager shows it as working fine.
However, next to it are two additional "devices": Packet Scheduler
Miniport #6 Realtek RTL8139(A) PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter Realtek RTL8139
(A) PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter - Packet Scheduler Miniport The two
packet scheduler miniport entries have a yellow ! next to them, and
their properties indicate that they are not functioning properly
because of driver issues. I tried various things to fix them, but
nothing worked.

Then I remembered that I had a second bare-bones installation of
Windows 2000 on the desktop, to be used as a rescue installation. I
shut down and booted the bare-bones installation. Its Device Manager
listed just the Realtek card, no references to any packet scheduler
miniport things. And this installation was still able to ping and go to
the internet, etc., so evidently those two miniport things are not
essential. Before shutting down the rescue installation I tried pinging
it from the Linux laptop, but still no joy. I also tried looking at
Network Places with Nautilus, but it still sees just "Windows Network,"
but nothing inside the network.

Then I rebooted to the usual Windows desktop installation. I opened
Device Manager and disabled the two miniport things. That required
restarting, so I did so. When it came back up the Linux laptop still
couldn't see the Windows desktop or ping it. But Device Manager now
showed: Packet Scheduler Miniport #5 Packet Scheduler Miniport #6
Realtek RTL8139(A) PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter Very strange. And neither
of the miniport things was disabled, even though I had definitely
disabled them.

I still think the problem is somewhere on the Linux laptop. But it's
time for the Clinic, so that will have to wait until later.



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