[Samba] Advertising Samba shares on the local network via mDNS

[Rishi Srivatsavai]

On 2/1/07, Volker Lendecke <Volker.Lendecke at sernet.de> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Feb 01, 2007 at 02:30:15PM -0500, Rishi Srivatsavai wrote:
> > >> I don't see what this offers over the old server announcement
> > >> datagrams used as part of network browsing.  Or are you just
> > >> trying to provide the same functionality without NetBIOS?
> > >> (e.g. over port 445)
> > >
> > >It's a more modern way of doing the same thing. Anything
> > >that allows me to stop maintaining nmbd is a goodness as
> > >far as I'm concerned :-).
> > >
> >
> > This support will be added in smbd. smbd will advertise "browseable"
> shares
> > via mDNS. It should only complement the NetBIOS  functionality provided
> by
> > nmbd.
>
> Quick reading about mDNS (correct me if I'm wrong) this
> would mean that you want smbd to listen on UDP port 5353.
> With the events system in SAMBA_3_0 this will be easier than
> it used to be, but I'm not certain this is a good idea.
> Traditionally in Samba3 it was nmbd who was responsible for
> the UDP-based services.


No, smbd will not be directly listening in/participating in the protocol.
I plan on using  the mDNSResponder code from Apple (available on
multiple platforms) which includes a library (libdns_sd) and a mDNS
daemon that performs the needed DNS operations via multicast on
UDP port 5353.  Applications advertise by using libdns_sd to issue
advertisement requests and receive results via IPC with the
mDNS daemon. I plan on modifying smbd to use libdns_sd and advertise
shares on the network.

Thanks,
Rishi