samba - Jan 2007 - Advertising Samba shares on the local network via mDNS

Hello All,

I would like to add support for advertising Samba shares (browseable ones)
on the local network using Multicast DNS. Multicast DNS allows applications
to query/publish network services on the local link. I would appreciate if
you
could all please share your thoughts on whether such support would be
welcome in Samba. If you know of existing efforts in Samba to include
such support please let me know as well.

With this support in Samba "mDNS" aware tools & clients on Mac OS
X
(Bonjour),
Linux(Avahi), Solaris & Windows can easily discover Samba shares on the
local link.
Once discovered users could go about configuring access to those shares.

Thanks,
Rishi

On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 04:30:32PM -0500, Rishi Srivatsavai
wrote:
> Hello All,
> 
> I would like to add support for advertising Samba shares (browseable ones)
> on the local network using Multicast DNS. Multicast DNS allows applications
> to query/publish network services on the local link. I would appreciate if
> you
> could all please share your thoughts on whether such support would be
> welcome in Samba. If you know of existing efforts in Samba to include
> such support please let me know as well.
> 
> With this support in Samba "mDNS" aware tools & clients on
Mac OS X
> (Bonjour),
> Linux(Avahi), Solaris & Windows can easily discover Samba shares on the
> local link.
> Once discovered users could go about configuring access to those shares.
No there is no current work implementing this so any patches for
current SVN would be very welcome !

Thanks,

	Jeremy

On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 03:57:03PM -0600, Gerald Carter
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 :-).

On 31/01/07, Rishi Srivatsavai <rishisv@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I would like to add support for advertising Samba shares (browseable ones)
> on the local network using Multicast DNS. Multicast DNS allows applications
> to query/publish network services on the local link. I would appreciate if
> you
> could all please share your thoughts on whether such support would be
> welcome in Samba. If you know of existing efforts in Samba to include
> such support please let me know as well.
On Mac OS X, the Samba service is already advertised over mDNS (by
launchd). It would be useful to add the list of shares to the
advertisement though.

-- 
James Peach | jorgar@gmail.com

On 1/31/07, Gerald Carter <coffeedude.jerry@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Jeremy Allison wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 03:57:03PM -0600, Gerald Carter 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 :-).
>
> Yeah ok.  Same difference :-)  I can't find any definitive
> docs on mDNS in Windows though.    Anyone got a URL to msdn
> articles?
>
>
Bonjour for Windows is available from Apple.

Rishi

On 2/1/07, Jeremy Allison <jra@samba.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Feb 01, 2007 at 06:15:57PM -0500, Rishi Srivatsavai wrote:
> >
> > 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.
>
> What license is libdns_sd available under ? Check for GPLv2/3
> compatibility please.

The shared library source (libdns_sd) is licensed under a 3-clause
BSD license which is compatible with GPL.
  http://developer.apple.com/opensource/internet/bonjour.html

Thanks,
Rishi