9.2 What Is Browsing?


To most people browsing means they can see the MS Windows and Samba servers in the Network Neighborhood, and when the computer icon for a particular server is clicked, it opens up and shows the shares and printers available on the target server.

What seems so simple is in fact a complex interaction of different technologies. The technologies (or methods ) employed in making all of this work include:

  • MS Windows machines register their presence to the network.

  • Machines announce themselves to other machines on the network.

  • One or more machine on the network collates the local announcements.

  • The client machine finds the machine that has the collated list of machines.

  • The client machine is able to resolve the machine names to IP addresses.

  • The client machine is able to connect to a target machine.

The Samba application that controls browse list management and name resolution is called nmbd . The configuration parameters involved in nmbd's operation are:

Browsing options: os level (*) , lm announce , lm interval , preferred master (*) , local master (*) , domain master (*) , browse list , enhanced browsing .

Name Resolution Method: name resolve order (*) .

WINS options: dns proxy , wins proxy , wins server (*) , wins support (*) , wins hook .

For Samba, the WINS Server and WINS Support are mutually exclusive options. Those marked with an (*) are the only options that commonly may need to be modified. Even if none of these parameters is set, nmbd will still do its job.



Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide
The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide, 2nd Edition
ISBN: 0131882228
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 297

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