Name

lmhosts — The Samba NetBIOS hosts file

Synopsis

lmhosts is the samba(7) NetBIOS name to IP address mapping file.

DESCRIPTION

This file is part of the samba(7) suite.

lmhosts is the Samba NetBIOS name to IP address mapping file. It is very similar to the /etc/hosts file format, except that the hostname component must correspond to the NetBIOS naming format.

FILE FORMAT

It is an ASCII file containing one line for NetBIOS name. The two fields on each line are separated from each other by white space. Any entry beginning with '#' is ignored. Each line in the lmhosts file contains the following information:

  • IP Address - in dotted decimal format.

  • NetBIOS Name - This name format is a maximum fifteen character host name, with an optional trailing '#' character followed by the NetBIOS name type as two hexadecimal digits.

    If the trailing '#' is omitted then the given IP address will be returned for all names that match the given name, whatever the NetBIOS name type in the lookup.

An example follows: 

#
# Sample Samba lmhosts file.
#
192.9.200.1	TESTPC
192.9.200.20	NTSERVER#20
192.9.200.21	SAMBASERVER

Contains three IP to NetBIOS name mappings. The first and third will be returned for any queries for the names "TESTPC" and "SAMBASERVER" respectively, whatever the type component of the NetBIOS name requested.

The second mapping will be returned only when the "0x20" name type for a name "NTSERVER" is queried. Any other name type will not be resolved.

The default location of the lmhosts file is in the same directory as the smb.conf(5) file.

FILES

lmhosts is loaded from the configuration directory. This is usually /etc/samba or /usr/local/samba/lib.

VERSION

This man page is part of version 4.10.0 of the Samba suite.

SEE ALSO

smbclient(1), smb.conf(5), and smbpasswd(8)

AUTHOR

The original Samba software and related utilities were created by Andrew Tridgell. Samba is now developed by the Samba Team as an Open Source project similar to the way the Linux kernel is developed.