The
netbios
name option allows you to set the NetBIOS name of the server. For example:
netbios name = YORKVM1
The default value for this configuration option is the server's hostname; that is, the first part of its complete DNS machine name. For example, a machine with the DNS name
ruby.ora.com would be given the NetBIOS name
RUBY by default. While you can use this option to restate the machine's NetBIOS name in the configuration file (as we did previously), it is more commonly used to assign the Samba server a NetBIOS name other than its current DNS name. Remember that the name given must follow the rules for valid NetBIOS machine names as outlines in Chapter 1,
Learning the Samba.
Changing the NetBIOS name of the server is not recommended unless you have a good reason. One such reason might be if the hostname of the machine is not unique because the LAN is divided over two or more DNS domains. For example, YORKVM1 is a good NetBIOS candidate for
vm1.york.example.com to differentiate it from
vm1.falkirk.example.com, which has the same hostname but resides in a different DNS domain.
Another use of this option is for relocating SMB services from a dead or retired machine. For example, if
SALES is the SMB server for the department, and it suddenly dies, you could immediately reset
netbios
name
=
SALES on a backup Samba machine that's taking over for it. Users won't have to change their drive mappings to a different machine; new connections to
SALES will simply go to the new machine.
