IP address to WINS address?

[Florian G. Pflug]

> Is it possible to use smbclient to look up the WINS address of a computer
> given only its IP address (or DNS hostname)?
If you're in the same subnet use nmblookup

> I've been trying for two
> days and looked through all the documentation, and the total amout of
> information on doing anything useful with smbclient amount to exactly one
> file - the man page, which I have read and is no help.
> 
> For example, I try to connect to a windows machine across the room from
> me, using only its IP address:
> 
> $ ./smbclient -L dummy -I 128.119.11.48
> Added interface ip=128.119.11.70 bcast=128.119.11.255 nmask=255.255.254.0
> session request to DUMMY failed
> session request to *SMBSERVER failed
Well... maybe Microsoft thinks this has to be that way for security
reasons... ;-))))))))))))))))))))))))))

> I've tried a few other combinations of options, all of which give the same
> error.  Oddly enough, other linux machine running samba respond to this,
> but windows machine just won't.  
Yes.. ask the guys in redmond why...

> This basically makes general browsing of
> the local subnet IMPOSSIBLE with smbclient...
If smbd & nmbd are runnig on your local machine there should be a file like
/var/lock/samba/browse.dat (The path depends on your distribution)

> It's very annoying, since
> samba is so great on the server side and so limited on the client side...
Well, actually samba concentrates on the server-side I guess....

> Isn't the client side is simpler, and more generally useful to people who
> are on primariy windows networks and need to get shares off of other
> computers?
There are other approches - there is a smb-lib which you load with
ld_preload - then, start e.g. a bash (or anything else). YOu have on /smb
the same view of the network as you would have from network neighbourhood. I
think this library is still beta - but there are reports that it works fine.


> A Network-Neighborhood-like interface to smbclient would be really great,
> and I would write such a frontent if I could just figure out how to get
> the necessary information OUT of smbclient...
Same as above - use smb-lib

                        Greetings, Florian Pflug