Linux-machines can not resolve several names (ping name) via libnss_wins ("hosts: wins" in nsswitch.conf). Simultaneously Windows-machines can to resolve this several names (ping name). WINS-server provided by Samba and file wins.dat for this several names does not contain the servername (NAME#20), but always contains the machinename (NAME#00). And there are no shared resources (files and printers) on this several machines.
This is a design decision. It's an easy change but not one that I'm convinced we should make. search for 0x20 in wins.c and change that to 0x00. Mail me directly if you want to try to convince me that we should change the current behavior. I'm closing this one as won't fix for now.
According to Samba documentation "it will be possible to ping any MS Windows machine by its NetBIOS machine name, as long as that machine is within the workgroup to which both the Samba machine and the MS Windows machine belong". Please clarify me such desing decision.
reopening for more discussion.
As I know, all Windows-machines register it's NAME#00, and only servers (stations with shared files and/or printers) register it's NAME#20. Not all Windows-machines have file and/or printer services. By default Windows resolve NAMES#00 and can ping any machine. But libnss_wins can not resolve Windows-machines without shares. I think it is strange. I don't know why there was such design decision. Please explain me this.
<0x20> was chosen for historical reasons based on the DNS lookups in smbd. But I'll give on this. Never felt really good about it anyways. Will fix for 3.0.3.
sorry for the same, cleaning up the database to prevent unecessary reopens of bugs.
database cleanup