Why isn't this smbmount attempt working?

Question

I can successfully access one of our local samba shares, which is on a windows pc (called marina) as follows:

$ sudo /usr/bin/smbclient \\\\marina\\resource_library <my password>
Domain=[MARINA] OS=[Windows 5.1] Server=[Windows 2000 LAN Manager]
smb: \> 

So, that works. I'm now trying to mount the above location (the resource_library folder on marina) to /mnt/resource_library (as a read only folder), but it keeps failing - i've tried a few variations of specifying the location:

$ sudo smbmount \\\\marina\\resource_library /mnt/resource_library -o username=max,password=<my password>,r
mount error: could not resolve address for marina: No address associated with hostname
No ip address specified and hostname not found

and

$ sudo smbmount //marina/resource_library /mnt/resource_library -o username=max,password=<my password>,r
mount error: could not resolve address for marina: No address associated with hostname
No ip address specified and hostname not found

and both of the above with MARINA instead of marina. It's bound to be some dumb mistake i'm making, can anyone see it?

cheers, max

Answer 1

I've found a non-workaround solution that worked for me, on debian (found it originally in some ubuntu forum, but this config file exists even in fedora, so I guess it's probably universal). I had to add "wins" on the /etc/nsswitch.conf file (and have "wins" installed). The line is now as follows:

hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns wins mdns4

Answer 2

Actually i found an answer, i'm not sure if it will work for everyone though. I'll put it up here in case anyone browses to the page. Basically i just needed to provide the ip address with the smbmount command, which i got with

$ nmblookup marina
querying marina on 192.168.0.255
192.168.0.15 marina<00>

Now, as it happens my life is easier here as 192.168.0.15 has been assigned to the associated mac address as a fixed network ip, so it will never change. So now i can just do

$sudo smbmount //marina/resource_library /mnt/resource_library -o ip=192.168.0.15,username=max,password=<my password>,r 

and it's sorted. If i was dealing with a randomly assigned ip for this smb share then i'm not sure what i'd do but it's not an issue here fortunately. :/

Answer 3

Try the command nmblookup marina. It queries the NetBIOS namespace (not DNS) and should return marina's IP address.

If it works, and you are sure that the IP address is static, you can use this address in your smbmount.

If it works, and you have DHCP addresses changing from time to time, try this command:

nmblookup marina \
   | grep -vi querying \
   | grep marina \
   | awk '{print $1}' \
   | uniq

It should return the IP address. If it works, you can change your command

You could do

sudo smbmount //marina/resource_library \
   /mnt/resource_library \
   -o ip=$(nmblookup marina \
        | grep -vi querying \
        | grep marina \
        | awk '{print $1}' \
        | uniq),username=max,password=foobar,r

Of course, this is a long command to remember. But then, you could define an 'alias' named mntmarina in your .bashrc, and you only have to type mntmarina...

Answer 4

Substituting my IP address for hostname worked for me. My share is called 'schnack'.

sudo smbmount //192.168.0.103/schnack ~/pipmnt