SMB Keep-alive.

[Christopher R. Hertel]

Richard Sharpe wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 14 May 2002, Christopher R.Hertel wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, May 15, 2002 at 10:07:07AM +1000, Tim Potter wrote:
> > > On Tue, May 14, 2002 at 03:10:00PM -0500, Christopher R. Hertel
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > I have not seen SMB Keep-Alive used except in a few odd
> > > > instances in which it is used to trick Windows into behaving
> > > > properly.
> > > >
> > > > Does anyone know if SMB Keep-Alive is actually used in
> > > > practice?
> > >
> > > Doesn't smbclient have to respond to keepalives or else the
> > > connection dies?
> >
> > Ethereal (the version I'm using, at least--I have not had time to
> > update lately and it is a bit out of date) reports these packets
> > as "NBSS Continuation Messages" and does *not* break down the
> > fields properly.  I am running 0.8.17.
> 
> Ummm, that is seriously out of date. Please update. The later
> versions understand significant parts of MSRPC.

Well, there was a reason I warned folks that I was using an out-of-date
version of Ethereal.  I was prodded into updating and the newer version
most certainly does figure things out better.

What I am seeing now...

Samba sends NBTSS Keep-Alive's every 6 minutes.  Last night, just to
test things out, I mapped a share between two Windows boxes.  The server
is a W/95 box, and the client is running W/98.  Unless my sister-in-law
rebooted the W/98 box (possible) it seems that W/95 does *not* send the
keep-alives.  I need to check the setup to be sure, but
I caught no packets in the capture.

Chris -)-----

-- 
Christopher R. Hertel -)-----                   University of Minnesota
crh at nts.umn.edu              Networking and Telecommunications Services