Windows file shares access through routed VPN

[KBerger]

Hi everyone.

It says here in the header of this forum, that for Windows file sharing access it is better to use TUN with WINS server.
Now I haven't found any posts about what exactly is needed to accomplish that.

I have a working VPN routed server, connecting my office LAN (192.168.0.0/27) to the VPN (10.0.0.0/24).
When I connect a remote client to the server, I can generally see the LAN, but I can't PING every machine there.
I can ping my 2 wifi routers NICs, then also one Windows 7 machine. Other machines (run Vista) don't respond to pings from the remote client. However, nmap from that client works fine and shows these machines OK.
From within the LAN itself every machine can be pinged OK.

What could be the matter with pings? Is it a Vista security feature to not respond to NATed pings?
And most importantly: what needs to be done to accomplish this Windows file sharing through routed VPN using WINS?
I have enabled WINS on my SAMBA server, which is also VPN server connecting both networks.
Here is [global] part of my smb.conf:

Code: Select all

[global]
	workgroup = MYWORKGROUP
	server string = Samba Server Version %v
	netbios name = SAMBA
	interfaces = lo eth0 tun0 192.168.0.0/27 10.0.0.0/24

	# log files split per-machine:
	log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
	# maximum size of 50KB per log file, then rotate:
	max log size = 50
	security = user
	passdb backend = tdbsam

	local master = no
	os level = 33
	preferred master = yes
	wins support = yes

	dns proxy = yes

Of course, $MYWORKGROP is the name used by all the Windows machines on the LAN.

What else needs to be done?

Thanks for any help.
Kostya

[janjust]

the 'ping' issue and the WINS/share mounting are related, but largely different issues.

What happens if you try to access a remote share using the IP address (e.g. if you can ping a machine 192.168.0.11 with a remote share then what does 'start \\192.16.8.0.11' give?

if you can mount shares using the IP address THEN you can look at how to get WINS working.

As far as the 'ping' issue are concerned: it could easily be a firewall on the Vista host that is blocking traffic. How did you set up masquerading/NATting? can you try disabling the firewall on Vista?