[Samba] Cannot see server in win Neighborhood (again)

[Kevin Keane]

Are you listening on port 139, or only on port 445?

Microsoft had a great idea when they implemented SMB over TCP on port 445 and eliminated the ancient and inefficient NETBIOS over TCP, or NetBT (on port 139). Unfortunately, they didn't think it all the way through - you still need NETBIOS to populate the network neighborhood, so if your Samba server only listens on port 445, you won't get happy in your network neighborhood.

In Vista and Windows 7, this problem is fixed: they now use UPnP (renamed to Network Discovery) to populate the network neighborhood (and do a lot of other neat stuff). Samba does not yet support UPnP, though.

Bottom line: even though Samba supports turning off NetBT, DON'T.

This problem is exacerbated if you are using an IPv6 network, because Microsoft no longer even supports NETBIOS at all.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: samba-bounces at lists.samba.org [mailto:samba-
> bounces at lists.samba.org] On Behalf Of Matias Morawicki
> Sent: Friday, December 18, 2009 7:16 AM
> To: samba at lists.samba.org
> Subject: [Samba] Cannot see server in win Neighborhood (again)
> 
> Hello u all, sorry to bring this issue back again, but I´ve been
> searching and trying all the advices suggested in previous posts and I
> still can´t see the samba server in the win network neighborhood.
> 
> I can see the samba shares from win via net view \\servername
> 
> but if I issue a plain "net view" samba won´t show up. only the win
> machines, the same i can see on the Neighborhood...
> 
> I´ve tried stopping iptables, different smb.conf from the simple
> examples of t first chapters of samba by example,  to plenty of
> options... that´s why I´m not including my smb.conf, because I´ve
> tried many variations, always with the same results. I even tried a
> working smb.conf from another linux box which was showing in win
> Neighborhood...
> 
> and when I select local master = no  Samba would stay without master!
> I issue smbclient -L servername -U% and the master section remains
> empty.
> 
> It´s like samba is not being able to "talk" to the rest of the
> workgroup. (of course they are all in the same workgroup)
> 
> Btw, the server is a Centos 5.3, with samba 3.2.15 (it also happened
> with the default samba, so I´ve upgraded just in case...)
> 
> I hope someone can point me some directions...
> 
> thanks in advance!!
> 
> Matias
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