Home / ubuntu / Questions / 23568
Accepted
j-g-faustus
Asked: 2011-01-28 11:32:28 +0800 CST

Where does the Samba workgroup come from when Samba is not running?

  • 772

Using findsmb on my home network gives me this:

IP ADDR         NETBIOS NAME     WORKGROUP/OS/VERSION 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
192.168.1.3     MINI           [MSHOME] [Unix] [Samba 3.0.25b-apple]
192.168.1.9     SERVER        +[    MSHOME        ]
192.168.1.11    NAS            [    WORKGROUP     ]
  • MINI - a Mac mini
  • SERVER - Ubuntu 10.10 server; Samba installed but not running.
  • NAS - another Ubuntu 10.10 server; Samba installed but not running.

When Samba is running the Ubuntu groups are the values from /etc/samba/smb.conf, but with Samba turned off it falls back to these defaults - even different defaults for two installations of the same OS.

I would like to change the workgroups, but I can't figure out where the value is coming from: Not from Samba (that's a different value), not from Winbind (not running), not from Avahi (not installed); and I don't know of anything else involved in network groups.

How can I find this setting so I can change it?

networking

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Your workground name comes from the NetBIOS Name server which is running on your Ubuntu machines. It's shipped with Samba.

    You can change the workgroup name in samba configuration /etc/samba/smb.conf and then restart the NetBIOS server using init:

    sudo service nmbd restart

    You can also remove this service from running, but check the Samba documentation about what it does and if you need it:

    http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/manpages-3/nmbd.8.html

    • 4