"Finding" a samba server

[Urban Widmark]

On Sat, 2 Dec 2000, Steven wrote:

> I wish to use smbmount on my freebsd machine to mount this directory,
> however there is a firewall between the accomodation network and the rest of
> the campus which blocks TCP 139.

smbmount is for smbfs and smbfs is linux only. Sharity (light?) may be an
option.

> I have read in a number of places that I can use SSH to forward the local
> port on my machine of 139 to a unix machine on the campus network, which in
> turn will contact the samba server for the campus network.

Correct, if you have ssh access through the firewall you can tunnel
"anything" through that. Given that the ssh server on the inside allows
port forwarding.

Of course, you don't have to use 139 on your local machine,
smbmount/smbclient will let you connect to any portnumber.
 
> My problem is that I don't know the address of this samba server. Any ideas
> how to find it? (other than contacting the sysops which would looks well
> dodgy :-)

If you suspect that the sysadmins would object then maybe you should ask
them anyway before doing this.

nmblookup can find IP#/netbios names for you. If the unix box on the
campus network doesn't have samba already just compile it.

Note that ssh port forwarding by default only allows localhost to access
the forwarded ports. This can be changed (-g) to allow remote hosts to
access. However, do think before you enable that since it will allow
anyone that can reach your machine to reach the inside of the fw. Proper
firewalling rules on the freebsd box should prevent that.

/Urban