[Samba] Netbios and Zeroconf?

[Michael Schurter]

Fabian Zeindl wrote:
> Hi,
>  a totally simple, but maybe totally useless question: is there some
> (small) possibility to theoretically turn off the dns and service
> resolution provided by samba/netbios and use zeroconf/dns-sd instead?

To make Samba use zeroconf/dns-sd for name resolution set in smb.conf:[1]

name resolve order = host

And use something like this in your nsswitch.conf file:[2]

hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4

To prevent other machines from finding you via netbios add the following 
to smb.conf:[3]

disable netbios = yes

Other machines can still find you via DNS unless you don't send a 
hostname to the DHCP server (and it doesn't assign you one).  I'm not 
quite sure why you'd want to mess with DNS though because it could 
effect so many other services.

> I know it won't be much help for windows users, because they won't find
> the shares anymore, but maybe there'll be a zeroconf implementation on
> windows someday?

Never tried it, but these links look relevant:
http://www.stg.com/zeroconf_explorer.html
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/bonjourforwindows.html

Good luck!

Michael Schurter

[1] 
http://samba.org/samba/docs/man/manpages-3/smb.conf.5.html#NAMERESOLVEORDER
[2] http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/nss-mdns/
[3] 
http://samba.org/samba/docs/man/manpages-3/smb.conf.5.html#DISABLENETBIOS