Using MDNS to advertise OpenSolaris NAS to Mac computers

This step is not necessary, but it seems like a good idea if you have Mac computers.

Create the XML files that tell MDNS what to advertise. (Found this information from here, here, and here.

Create /etc/avahi/services/smb.service with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?><!--*-nxml-*-->
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service-group>
<name replace-wildcards="yes">%h</name>
<service>
<type>_device-info._tcp</type>
<port>548</port>
<txt-record>model=RackMac</txt-record>
</service>
<service>
<type>_smb._tcp</type>
<port>139</port>
</service>
</service-group>

The service that contains <txt-record>model=RackMac</txt-record> is only there so that on Mac computers the NAS shows up as an XServe server.

Enable mdns and the avahi-bridge-dsd service:
svcadm enable dns/multicast
svcadm enable avahi-bridge-dsd

I had to reboot the NAS after doing this before MDNS started working and properly advertising.

This is how the NAS appears on the Macs:
NAS normal icon

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 5th, 2009 at 2:20 pmand is filed under OpenSolaris, Storage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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