[jcifs] querying a wins server for a list of workgroups

[Michael B. Allen]

On Thu, Jul 26, 2001 at 11:51:35PM -0500, Christopher R. Hertel wrote:
> > > address for the __MSBROWSE__ name.
> > >
> >         Well what about a 0x1B lookup to WINS?
> 
> That will find a Domain Master Browser, not a Local Master Browser.  Still,
> a DMB can be useful, if you know how to talk to it.

So you can't just do the standard NetServerEnum RAP call on it?

> BTW, I found something very, very interesting when I was grubbing around
> in some old docs.  You can send a query to the WINS server for *0x1B (that's
> a wildcard query with a suffix of 0x1B) and the WINS server will
> return a list of all the DMBs it knows about.

Was this the thing that Richard said only responded to 137 though?

> > > this.  The draft could, however, be changed to allow:
> > >
> > >   http://<dns_or_ip>/
> > >
> > > to go through the same semantic 'is it a server or a workgroup' hoops
> > > that
> > >
> > >   http://<nbt_name>/
> > >
> > > goes through.
> > >
> > connect by IP and retrieve a browse list. Trying to reiterates the same
> > old problem of deciding what name to use for session establishment.
> 
> Yes, I see the problem.  It would be nice to be able to query remote LMBs,
> but as I think about it I don't see this as something that should be done in
> an SMB URL string.  LMBs have a habit of 'moving' around within a subnet, so
> the URL string would not be reliable.  That's not consistent with the
> purpose of URLs.

Well, the URL for addressing a workgroup would not change. It would just
be like smb://name. The code would just have to query the NAME<0x20>,
NAME<0x1D>, and now NAME<0x1B> all in parallel. Actually this might be
as easy as just switchingg the 0x1D for 0x1B. Talk about a one-liner,
how about 1 character -- wouldn't that be embarrassing :~P

Mike