[Samba] Browing in Samba4 AD domain

[Jason Voorhees]

Hello guys, Rowland :)

I recently had the opportunity to configure a Samba 3.x server which
acts as a WIN server. For testing purposes only, I've configured a
group of 4 Windows machines to use my Samba 3.x host as WINS server
but unfortunately those 4 hosts were not able to see each other in the
windows browsing list. I might guess WINS is only providing NetBIOS
name resolution but no machine browsing feature. Am I right?

Thanks you all for your help

On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 5:44 PM, Jason Voorhees <jvoorhees1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks again Rowland. It isn't 100% clear to me yet, hehe :p, but it's time
> for testing, debugging and posting with my results.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 2:21 PM, Rowland penny <rpenny at samba.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 01/04/16 19:51, Jason Voorhees wrote:
>>>
>>> If AD domains are based on DNS and WINS relies on NetBIOS, what
>>> protocol(s) are used by computers to create and see (browse) all the
>>> machines of the domain?
>>
>>
>> As far as Samba is concerned it uses both, DNS & NetBIOS, but instead of
>> using WINS, it uses DNS to find the machines and then 'nmbd' produces the
>> browsing list (this is how I understand it works)
>>
>> I have two DCs and a domain member running as a server, I do not uses WINS
>> (well not as a setting in smb.conf) but the other Linux machines (including
>> the member server) show up if I browse the network, the two DCs do not.
>>
>> This is down to the 'nbt' portion of the 'samba' daemon not having the
>> required code to browse the network. You should also be aware that you
>> cannot run 'nmbd' on a DC, it will conflict with 'nbt'
>>
>> Rowland
>>
>>>
>>> While it's clear to me that a hostname will resolve to an IP address
>>> through DNS queries, I'm not sure how is the browsing list created and
>>> maintained. In old NT style domain, any computer of the domain could be
>>> selected to act as a master browser, and the use of WINS could just simplify
>>> this by having all the machines registered to the WINS server based on
>>> NetBIOS names.
>>>
>>> So now in a Samba4 AD domain, does it make sense the concept of master
>>> browser yet? Who maintains a browsing list? If any, how is this browsing
>>> list maintained? is it based on NetBIOS or DNS or both? I'm asking this
>>> because regardless of the fact that I have 2 Samba4 AD controllers without
>>> browsing features built-in, I am still being able to see certain machines in
>>> my network. So I guess "someone" is in keeping some kind of browsing list
>>> active.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
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>
>