How to disable WINS or NetBIOS on Leopard

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How to disable WINS or NetBIOS on Leopard

Hi all,

unfortunately the search did not return any useful results, so I'd like to ask the following question here:

I am using my private MBP (OSX 10.5.5) in our company network (Windows no Macs...), connected via onboard LAN.
I have activated DHCP for this connection to get a valid IP address, and this works fine.
Unfortunately, after receiving the DHCP address, my NetBIOS hostname gets updated from (I suppose) our Primary Domain Controller. The hostname provided is not only wrong, but also a duplicate of a Windows machine that is already part of the domain.

As company network policy dictates, no non-win machines are allowed (as long as they don't make trouble...), so my MBP will not be included into the domain. IT support tells me if I cannot solve the problem, the MBP must go.

What I have done so far is to manually overwrite the WINS name in the system preferences setting, but that change doesn't stick. It gets updated with the wrong duplicate name instantly after closing the window.

Is there a way (similar to Win **) to disable WINS or NetBIOS for DHCP?

Thanks in advance for any helpful hints.

Best regards
Ruediger

MacBook Pro 2.2GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on Nov 12, 2008 2:00 AM

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Answer 1

Spectre

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Nov 12, 2008 2:56 AM in response to rstang

Well interesting question. I found this site which offers some tips about disabling netbios: http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/r19785490-OS-X-Disabling-NetBIOS-broadcast s-in-Leopard

Not sure if that helps or if you saw that yet but its all I could find right now.

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Answer 2

Spectre

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Nov 12, 2008 3:38 AM in response to Spectre

Here is another site I found after digging around a bit:

http://jim-zimmerman.com/blog/?p=160

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Answer 3

rstang Author

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Nov 12, 2008 7:44 AM in response to Spectre

Hi Spectre,

first of all thank you for your help.

I have checked the two links you found, and have tried the suggestions there, plus some more.
After blocking all incoming and outgoing NetBIOS/WINS traffic (ports 135, 137-139, 445, 1512, each TCP and UDP), the hostname still is changed when I plug in the network cable and get a DHCP address.

It seems that although the new hostname is displayed in the WINS section of the network configuration, it is not received via WINS, but via DHCP.

So, there is a new and different question now: is there a way to configure the OSX dhcp client to not receive a hostname from the network?

BTW: system log says:
configd[14]: setting hostname to "rtgnb209.intranet.local"

Best regards,
R.

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Answer 4

rstang Author

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Nov 12, 2008 8:21 AM in response to rstang

Hi all,

after doing a little more research now that the "Spotlight turned to DHCP", I figured out that adding the following line to /etc/hostconfig prevents the DHCP client from updating the hostname:

HOSTNAME=<desired permanent hostname>

It seems that in either previous OSX versions or with specific configurations, a line is present that reads "HOSTNAME=-AUTOMATIC-". If that is the case, or with 10.5.5 if a dedicated hostname is missing, DHCP client is allowed to update the systems hostname.

Thanks again for your help.

Best regards,
R.

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Answer 5

Tim5

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Nov 25, 2008 6:52 AM in response to rstang

Hi,

I have exact the same problem and my network admin had also figured out the same cause. Where exactly is this file to edit (sorry for the dumb question).

Best wishes,

Tim.

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Answer 6

Spectre

Level 1

125 points

Nov 25, 2008 10:32 PM in response to Tim5

/etc/hostconfig is the name of the file.

Open Terminal and type pico /etc/hostconfig and there you can edit it to add that line rstang was talking about.

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