Our backup WINS server has been unavailable from some time now, and as I result, we've created another one. There are now three Universtity WINS servers, and the order of preference is currently has follows:
146.231.128.57 (leopard.ru.ac.za)
146.231.120.66 (eve.ict.ru.ac.za)
146.231.120.65 (madam.ict.ru.ac.za)
For the vast majority of uses, this change will happen automatically when your computer next renews its DHCP lease. No action is required on the part of these users.
Those people who've hard coded their IP address settings or are using the Samba suite will need to change their machine's configuration to reflect the new WINS settings. For Samba users, the necessary line in your smb.conf file is
wins servers = 146.231.128.57 146.231.120.66 146.231.120.65
Windows users with hard coded settings will need to edit their network connection's advanced properties, or change to using an automatically assigned IP address (DHCP).
On a related note, the primary WINS server (leopard) will be taken down over the course of the weekend and reinstalled. This won't affect anyone who has made the necessary changes to their WINS settings as they'll automatically fall over to using one of the backup WINS servers (eve.ict). Those users who still only have one or two WINS servers (leopard and madam) listed will be unable to resolve NetBIOS names while the primary server is down.