samba as wins-server

[David Landgren]

Florian Hengstberger wrote:
> I'm not the admin, I own a normal workstation. I just wanted
> to know if setting up samba as an wins-server improves
> the speed of netbios resolution. 
> It seems to me that I'll get in trouble when other XP boxes are around,
> because I've heard that the first win XP box on the net rules the workgroup an
> manages all netbios stuff.
> By the way: If samba conflicts with XP, how do XP machines
> manage not to get in trouble if there is more than one XP box?

Your admins probably already have a WINS server, you should point to it 
and you'll be set. Look at the 'wins server' parameter in smb.conf.

As to how XP boxes get on with each other, they hold elections, and the 
host with the most votes wins (more or less). The exact parameters that 
control the outcome are:

   os level
   preferred master
   domain master
   local master

Samba documentation explains this pretty well.

David