Firewall and samba

[Chanchao]

On Thu, 2006-11-30 at 07:57 +0000, Rutger van Haasteren wrote:

> Someone pointed out that I might be able to connect from Machine B to
> Machine A by using the IP adress. This is true. So my problem becomes:
> 
> When I configure my firewall I can only connect to the samba server by
> using the ip adress. When I try to use the name ( e.g. "Desktop-PC")
> the call is blocked. Does this have something to do with broadcasts?
> And how do they work?

I think the way Windows finds (or doesn't find) host names in a peer
network environment is pretty black magic.   Indeed using the IP address
is most reliable, assuming you have no objection to using fixed IP's for
your network of course.   

And if IP's are fixed then you can put them in your hosts list as well.
Can be done with the System->Administration->Networking panel, then the
hosts tab.  (Though there exists a bug in there with Edgy I think,
causing that window to crash in some cases.)

Best solution is probably to let the Samba server be a WINS server as
well.

Back to the manuals. :)

Cheers,
Chanchao