Tag Archives: samba

How to See Samba Shares on a Windows 10 Network

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wsdd is a service by christgau on GitHub, which implements a Web Service Discovery host daemon for Ubuntu. This enables Samba hosts to be found by Web Service Discovery Clients like Windows 10.

If you are experiencing any issues with this service, please let us know in the comments or submit an issue on GitHub.

Change to /tmp directory.

cd /tmp

Download and unzip the archive.

wget https://github.com/christgau/wsdd/archive/master.zip

unzip master.zip

Rename wsdd.py to wsdd.

sudo mv wsdd-master/src/wsdd.py wsdd-master/src/wsdd

Copy to /usr/bin.

sudo cp wsdd-master/src/wsdd /usr/bin

Copy wsdd to /etc/systemd/system.

sudo cp wsdd-master/etc/systemd/wsdd.service /etc/systemd/system

Open wsdd.service in nano and comment out User=nobody and Group=nobody with a ; semicolon.

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/wsdd.service
[Unit]
Description=Web Services Dynamic Discovery host daemon
; Start after the network has been configured
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target
; It makes sense to have Samba running when wsdd starts, but is not required
;Wants=smb.service





[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/wsdd --shortlog
; Replace those with an unprivledged user/group that matches your environment,
; like nobody/nogroup or daemon:daemon or a dedicated user for wsdd
; User=nobody
; Group=nobody
; The following lines can be used for a chroot execution of wsdd.
; Also append '--chroot /run/wsdd/chroot' to ExecStart to enable chrooting
;AmbientCapabilities=CAP_SYS_CHROOT
;ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/install -d -o nobody -g nobody -m 0700 /run/wsdd/chroot
;ExecStopPost=rmdir /run/wsdd/chroot





[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save and exit (press CTRL + X, press Y and then press ENTER)

Start and enable wsdd.

sudo systemctl start wsdd
sudo systemctl enable wsdd

Output:

Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/wsdd.service → /etc/systemd/system/wsdd.service.

Now check that the service is running.

sudo service wsdd status

Output:

wsdd.service - Web Services Dynamic Discovery host daemon
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/wsdd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Wed 2020-06-10 10:51:39 CEST; 8s ago
Main PID: 40670 (python3)
Tasks: 1 (limit: 6662)
Memory: 10.8M
CGroup: /system.slice/wsdd.service
└─40670 python3 /usr/bin/wsdd --shortlog





jun 10 10:51:39 ubuntu systemd[1]: Started Web Services Dynamic Discovery host daemon.
jun 10 10:51:40 ubuntu wsdd[40670]: WARNING: no interface given, using all interfaces

You should now be able to browse your Ubuntu machines and Samba shares in the Windows 10 file explorer. You may need to restart the Windows 10 machines to force discovery.

You may also want to reboot the Ubuntu server just to make sure the wsdd service starts up automatically without issue.
How to Uninstall wsdd

If you want to completely uninstall wsdd, stop and disable the service.

sudo systemctl stop wsdd
sudo systemctl disable wsdd

Remove wsdd from /usr/bin.

sudo rm /usr/bin/wsdd

Remove service file.

sudo rm /etc/systemd/system/wsdd.service

Configuring Samba to be a WINS server

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This is quite easy to do, and it makes browsing the smb network fast.

Configuring the server:
simply edit smb.conf (typically located at /etc/samba/smb.conf)
locate the the wins support and enable it.:

# Windows Internet Name Serving Support Section:
# WINS Support - Tells the NMBD component of Samba to enable it's WINS Server
wins support = yes

setup the way samba should resolve the hosts:

# What naming service and in what order should we use to resolve host names
# to IP addresses
#   name resolve order = lmhosts host wins bcast
   name resolve order = host wins bcast

The following option should be addet to the linux DHCP server (if you use linux as a DHCP server):

option netbios-name-servers x.x.x.x;

where x.x.x.x is the IP of the WINS server

If you use a normal router, sometimes they support pushing out the wins server, if you use a router running dd-wrt
go tothe  basic setup and add the WINS server IP, there.

If this fails you can add the WINS server manually to windows:
go to the control panel, and press the View network status and tasks, then press the change adapter setting
right click the network interface and select properties, select the TCP/IP (for windows 7 select TCP/IPv4)
and press properties again click advanced and select the WINS  and add the IP of the WINS server and you are ready to go

WINS_server_win7

For linux clients simply edit the smb.conf and add the following:

# WINS Server - Tells the NMBD components of Samba to be a WINS Client
# Note: Samba can be either a WINS Server, or a WINS Client, but NOT both
   wins server = x.x.x.x

replace x.x.x.x with the IP of the WINS server

Happy smb surfing 🙂

The Remote DVD player project.

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What to do when you just get the urge to watch a DVD movie?
well over time i discarded alle my DVD players and went on using Popcorn Hour A110/WD TV Live Media players

I discovered the project called DVDReadFS The project enables a machine to read a DVD and remove the macro vision on the fly,

first i installed the following packages:
libdvdcss, fuse and the fuse-devel packages

then followed the guide at DVDReadFS for compiling DVDReadFS, i ended up making a permanent mount point in /etc/fstab

dvdreadfs#/dev/hdd /mnt/dvd1 fuse ro,kernel_cache,allow_other 0 0

I then shared the mount point in samba. Now the only thing i need to do when i wanna watch a DVD movie is to  drop a DVD in the drive and open the share on my media player

i will post some more installation details when i will me making my small networked DVD player, using a VIA C7 and a old DVD drive built into a discarded Cambridge CD audio case that i will modify, to fit the PC and drive.

to be updated!.