In Configuring CIFS, why append '_A' to host name?

curious_george — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:09:20 GMT

I have configured my Alfresco environment to use CIFS. In the file-servers-custom.xml, for the host name value, why is "_A" appended to the local server name? Would any harm be done in removing "_A" so that it is just "${localname}" ? The only reason I can think of for needing "_A" to be appended

Re: In Configuring CIFS, why append '_A' to host name?

pmonks — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:38:40 GMT

FYI in 2.1 we changed the default suffix from "_A" to "A" - the underscore caused problems in some environments.

As to your broader question about why have a suffix at all, you're spot on - it's because Windows machines (by default) already have an SMB / CIFS server running, and the only way to register another one is via a "virtual" NetBIOS name (those probably aren't the right technical terms btw - I'm by no means an expert on the SMB / CIFS protocol!). 😉

When Alfresco is running on OSes other than Windows, the suffix is basically redundant - in that case everything is done via raw TCP/IP so provided the hostname maps to the IP address of the server Alfresco is running on, everything should work fine regardless of what the hostname actually is.

Note that I believe that the NetBIOS name may take on some meaning again (even if Alfresco is running on a non-Windows OS) in the case where Alfresco is configured to participate in an ActiveDirectory domain (eg. for NTLM based SSO). That's getting a bit beyond my knowledge though, so YMMV.

Also, if anyone out there knows more about this stuff than I, please reply back here - I like to be edumucated! 😉

Cheers,
Peter

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In Configuring CIFS, why append '_A' to host name?

Re: In Configuring CIFS, why append '_A' to host name?