problem using wins client

[Tom H]

On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 6:38 AM, Luca Ferrari <fluca1978 at infinito.it> wrote:
>
> I'm running ubuntu 10.04 and the computer is a network that uses the wins
> server. I installed samba and cifs related stuff, changed the nsswitch.conf so
> that it resolves hosts using (1) file, (2) dns, (3) wins. I edited the smb.conf
> and added the wins server = 1.2.3.4 address of the wins server. However, if I
> do a nmblookup I see the program doing a broadcast query. I tryed then to
> change the name resolv order placing wins at the begin but still doing
> nmblookup -d 5 winmachine
> I can see that the program sends a broadcast. I then tried
> nmblookup -d 5 -R -U  1.2.3.4 winmachine
> and I got a positive correct reply.
> So my problems are:
> 1) how to instrument nmblookup to use the wins server instead of a broadcast
> 2) make recursive requests against the server, since the normale request
> (i.e., without -R) is not working.

>From the nmblookup man page:

 -R
            Set the recursion desired bit in the packet to do a recursive
            lookup. This is used when sending a name query to a machine running
            a WINS server and the user wishes to query the names in the WINS
            server. If this bit is unset the normal (broadcast responding)
            NetBIOS processing code on a machine is used instead. See RFC1001,
            RFC1002 for details.

-U <unicast address>
            Do a unicast query to the specified address or host unicast
            address. This option (along with the -R option) is needed to query
            a WINS server.