Clean up network browser? [SOLVED]

[scrognoid]

When my backup server browses the network using caja, it sees two of everything, plus another set in Windows Network. I have three computers. Caja sees:

XPS13 and XPS13 SMB (Mint 17.3)
LATE5430 and LATE5430 SMB (18.3)
JENXPS (File Sharing) and JENXPS (File Sharing)
Windows Network>Workgroup>
XPS13
LATE5430
JENXPS

I guess each computer appears on the Linux network (forgot what that's called) and Samba. It's hard to think I need both if 19.1 doesn't bother to give them different names. And then another list in Windows Network, which I thought was Samba.

Can anyone explain what the duplicates are? Even better, can I hide them, leaving one unique path to things? When I tell my other users how to find their backups I'm never sure what to say.

[altair4]

You are getting duplicates ( actually in some cases triplicates ) because there are two ways for machines to announce themselves to the network:

Samba: using NETBIOS
Samba: using mDNS ( aka avahi )

XPS13 & LATE5430 = NETBIOS
XPS13 SMB & LATE5430 SMB = I'm unassuming are Avahi - these will resolve to something like xps13.local. Do you have an entry in /etc/avahi/services ?

Not sure about JENXPS. Is this a Mint 19 machine?

Are all your machines running Linux? You can disable NETBIOS on all those machines but then interoperability with Windows becomes an issue.

[scrognoid]

All 3 machines are running linux mint.

In directory /etc/avahi/services are files

1) samba.service samba.service_save udisks.service [xps13, mint 17.3]
2) samba.service [late5430, mint 18.3]
3) nothing [jenxps, mint 19.1]

[altair4]

You have a couple of options:

[1] Disable netbios.

On all your non-Mint19 machines edit /etc/samba/smb.conf and right under the workgroup = WORKGROUP line add this one:

Code: Select all

disable netbios = yes

[2] Set the client smb dialect higher than SMB1.

On all your non-Mint19 machines edit the same smb.conf file and in the same place add this line:

Code: Select all

client max protocol = SMB3

The side benefit of this option is that file transfer speeds and connection stability will improve.

Notes:

** After either option you will need to reboot the machine I'm afraid.
** You can use both options if you want.
** Mint19 already does option [2] by default.

There is one last peculiarity about netbios. If you successfully connected to a machine via netbios it's presence is cached so even though everything is disabled you may still see them in the file browser. Eventually they will disappear after a couple of normal reboots of those machines over time.

[scrognoid]

I did both. Everything is working and the browser is much cleaner. Thanks.