[Samba] NETBIOS browse by name

Craig Matsuura cmatsuura at control4.com
Wed Nov 28 18:12:00 GMT 2007


I'm currently using samba3.0.24 ( and have tried 25):

If I use a windows box to browse to my share by name it does not work.  If I 
browse by ip it works fine.  If I use samba2 the browse works fine.

The netbios name I provide in the smb.conf is longer than the 15 char max.  
However in samba2 it used to truncate this.  In Samba3 it appears to try to 
truncate, however it takes the first 16 characters and then it appears to 
append the server string to the end of the netbios name.  You can see this 
under windows xp.

To resolve my problem I had to truncate the netbios name in the smb.conf file 
to 15 chars.  Anything above this will prvent you from browsing by name from 
windows.

Seems like a bug to me.  Samba2 handled this just fine.  

To duplicate just set your server string and netbios name.  Make the netbios 
name longer than 15 characters.  I used the following in my smb.conf to cause 
the problem.

[global]
  workgroup = COMPANY4
  server string = house-controller-5000-0019D1DF9BWW
  netbios name = 0019D1DF9BWW-house-controller-5000



More information about the samba mailing list