Networking With Windows

Gardner Bell

This section is borrowed and modified from Alexander Neundorf's README file on LISa.

KDE features two powerful servers called the Lan Information Server (LISa) and Restricted Lan Information Server (resLISa) which are used to identify CIFS and other servers on your local network providing a function similar to “Network Neighbourhood” in Microsoft® Windows®.

How It Works

Lisa only depends on the TCP/IP stack so samba configuration is not required to make it work but the samba package is a dependency. To find hosts on your local network you set a range of IP-Addresses in your configuration file that Lisa will check. When you start the Lisa daemon it will send a ICMP, echo request message to all the IP addresses given in the configuration file and await a response.

Note

The Lisa daemon requires root privileges to open the socket, but once the socket has been established root privileges are immediately dropped.

You can also execute Lisa using nmblookup "*".

Note

If you do not have the nmblookup program it can be found at http://www.samba.org or through packages provided by your distribution

. The samba command nmblookup "*" will send a broadcast message to the attached network and any host that is running the smb-services will send a reply stating that it is accepting connections.

resLISa

If your company network has very strict guidelines governing what ports can and cannot be opened you will have to use ResLisa to communicate with other hosts on your network. Because ResLisa cannot ping entire networks or address ranges you will have to add each host by name to your confiuration file. Currently you are able to add up to 64 hosts, and these addresses are pingable.

Note

ResLisa will only provide the information over a UNIX® domain socket, i.e. not over the network. The name of the socket is /tmp/resLISa-YourLoginName, so ResLisa can be safely run on the same machine by more than one user.

Configuration

At startup Lisa first parses the configuration file in the users home directory under $HOME/.lisarc. If this file does not exist Lisa will then look for a system wide confiuration located at /etc/lisarc. Now for a sample example configuration file:

PingAddresses = 192.168.100.0/255.255.255.0;192.168.100.10-192.168.199.19;192.168.200.1;
PingNames = my_host1;my_host2    #Hosts by name (required for resLISa)
AllowedAddresses = 192.168.0.0/255.255.0.0
BroadcastNetwork = 192.168.100.0/255.255.255.0
SearchUsingNmblookup = 1         #also try nmblookup
FirstWait = 30                   #30 one-hundredth's of a second
SecondWait = -1                  #Only try once
#SecondWait = 60                 #Try twice and wait 0.6 seconds
UpdatePeriod = 300               #Update every 300 sec's
DeliverUnnamedHosts = 0          #Don't publish unnamed hosts
MaxPingsAtOnce = 256             #Send up to 256 ICMP echo requests at once

Lisa can also be configured graphically in the KDE Control Center->Internet & Network->Local Network Browsing item in the K menu. However, to use this option Lisa must be started with the -K command line switch.

Related Information

For a full list of command line switches and further examples see the entire Lisa manual by entering help:/lisa in Konqueror.