Anyone with experience using lmhosts

[Freehill]

I recently stopped using netbios over tcp/ip. I wanted to try something a little different and use lmhosts for netbios name resolution.

The setup here is pretty simple; there are 4 PCs networked together as a workgroup. Sharing a folder on each PC so we can move files between computers. With netbios over tcp/ip enabled they can open up My Network Places and browse the PCs. Does lmhosts allow this same type of computer browsing? Or does it work completely different?

I'm still searching for some answers with Google but haven't come up with any real answers.

[Soloist1]

Re: Anyone with experience using lmhosts

I believe lmhosts is more like a UNIX hosts file and just provides name resolution for the particular computer the file it resides on.

[Freehill]

Re: Anyone with experience using lmhosts

I finally found some info and I did use it the way it was intended but it doesn't work with the computer browser service like I thought it would. Not a big deal, but it poses a problem with the younger computer users in the house. So I just enbled netbios over tcp/ip again.

[Soloist1]

Re: Anyone with experience using lmhosts

lmhosts is more for tcp/ip packaged utilities. Examples are ftp, telnet and ping. It's basically in there because it was carried over from xenix. I have never got it to function myself. In a unix enviroment all you have to do is add the correct entries to the host file, configure your network card with a tcpip addy, mask and gateway and make sure that tcpip is running. And name resolution is by default taken from that file if another method like dns isn't configured. Doesn't work the same in a windows environment though. It seems like it is a file they just never bothered getting rid of but dumped the functionality.

[illumina]

Re: Anyone with experience using lmhosts

you can always build a simple file server out of old parts, and put all your files there. I store all my DVDs on my server (gotta do something with half a terabyte), and stream movies to my HTPC, and my main computer..