[Samba] NetBIOS name resolution from Linux

[John H Terpstra]

On Saturday 17 May 2008 06:41:08 am Olivier Parisy wrote:
> John H Terpstra a écrit :
> > On Friday 16 May 2008 09:22:43 am Charles Marcus wrote:
> >> On 5/16/2008 10:08 AM, L.P.H. van Belle wrote:
> >>>>> set your resolve.conf to resolve on localhost first and set the
> >>>>> search order.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> example of the resolve.conf
> >>>>> search yourlocaldomain.internal.local otherdomain.com
> >>>>> nameserver 127.0.0.1
> >>>>> nameserver ipofprovider
> >>>>
> >>>> Much better to use the opendns servers than any randon ISP DNS...
> >>>
> >>> First why use open dns servers.
> >>> the dns servers of your provider is much less hops away.
> >>
> >> Hops really don't matter... most ISP DNS servers are unreliable... some
> >> are extremely unreliable... I said 'random' meaning, it really wouldn't
> >> matter what ISP you were using, I'd say the same thing...
> >
> > OK - now that we have split the atom regarding what might be the best DNS
> > solution, how does this help resolve NetBIOS names within Linux? Have I
> > missed something vital in this thread?  Seems I must have.
> >
> > I'd like to know how you propose to store the name_type info in DNS?
> >
> > For example, how would you store "MYSERVERNAME<20>" in DNS?
> >
> > Next, how will you teach the Windows client to search DNS for that info.
> > After all, we are dealing with the NetBIOS name space.
>
> With all due respect, that is not clear to me either.
>
> I am "only" looking for a simple way to resolve NetBIOS names on a Linux
> machine. Replacing NetBIOS resolution by a full-fledged local DNS would,
> I suppose, be appropriate on an enterprise-scale network, but we are
> just talking about an home LAN here (which I should have stated more
> clearly from the start).

I am a little lost at to what the problem is here.  WINS does not require 
winbindd to be running.  On the Linux system it requires:

1) In your /etc/nsswitch.conf file:
...
hosts:  files wins [NOTFOUND=return] dns
...

2) Install the samba file libnss_wins.so.2 in the /lib directory (or on 64-bit 
systems in the /lib64 directory)

3) Run nmbd


That's it!  What is so difficult?  What makes this so complicated?  If you do 
not need DNS, then don't even run it (or else just run a caching DNS server).

Winbind is orthogonal to wins.  They serve entirely differing purposes.

- John T.

> My understanding is the following: I need to bridge NetBIOS name
> resolution, as provided by nmbd, with the libc gethostbyname() standard
> call. The Name Service Switch (NSS) seems to be designed for this
> purpose: by adding a "wins" entry in nsswitch.conf and installing
> winbind, the later can then act as a service to NSS (through
> /lib/libnss_wins.so.2; or is it /lib/libnss_winbind.so.2?).
>
> Now, all of this is nice and dandy, but installing winbind opens a whole
> can of worms for me: since it also insists in handling my users and
> groups (which, as I understand it, is its primary goal after all), it
> cannot work "out of the box" and breaks my simple SMB share setting.
>
> So I would say that winbind (or the fact that winbind + libnss_wins.so
> are distributed as the same packet on Debian?) is overkill for me.
>
> Is this description correct? I'd be very interested in a confirmation.
>
> Regards.