Mint 18.1/Samba blocks Windows network

[globetrotters1]

It's a strange topic I'd need an answer of someone knowledgable:

Windows network recognition fails as soon as one Linux Mint 18.1 (Samba) is connected to the network. It doesn't happen all the time, but suddenly the all computers disappear from the Windows network and are inaccessible. As soon as I switch off the Mint system, everything returns to normal. My network is a ethernet wired fixed IP network with seven computers.

Does someone know what the problem might be?

Help is appreciated!

[altair4]

If you have static ip addresses on all your machines it's not clear why you are browsing for them unless I don't understand your post.

Based on what you wrote it appears that the Linux machine tries to and succeeds in becoming the local master browser of your network. You can prevent that from happening and see if that fixes this issue.

Edit /etc/samba/smb.conf and add the following lines under the workgroup = WORKGROUP line:

Code: Select all

preferred master = No
local master = No
os level = 0

Then restart samba: sudo service smbd restart and sudo service nmbd restart or just reboot the box.