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I am creating a Raspberry Pi distribution (heavily based on Raspbian, mostly just the software I'm pre-loading onto it that makes it different).
It needs to be aimed at complete noobs and I will be hoping to provide it in a state where it does not require a monitor to configure.
One thought I have is that the configuration could be performed by web interface and that 'out the box' with the OS on an SD card, it could be plugged into any Windows (although ideally multi-platform) network and be accessible from the browser by a friendly name, for example 'pi.local' (it's IP address might not be known and the ability to determine IP address can be complex for noobs).
I have heard that something like the Bonjour Print Service can achieve this but that this needs to be installed to work from Windows machines. Are there any other solutions for achieving this?
deed02392
Posted 2014-05-20T09:33:35.837
Reputation: 2 662
What about creating a netbios name in your samba smb.conf and assign it as many default networks you know (like WORKGROUP). Offcause if the user has a custom network, I don't think it will work. – Bolli – 2014-05-20T10:38:00.177
You could take a look at avahi beside the mentioned NetBIOS name. There are avahi packages for raspbian.
– VMai – 2014-05-20T11:10:35.103@Bolli Can you elaborate on what you mean by a 'custom network'? It is likely I'll be dealing with on-site technicians who aren't fully aware with how their network has been setup. We're talking about Junior and Infant schools in the UK here, where the necessary tech know-how on managing a domain has been abstracted through something like RM tools, or an off-site engineer looks after complicated aspects (anything beyond adding new user accounts and machines). – deed02392 – 2014-05-20T15:58:22.750
@deed02392 I mean, if I remember correct, that Windows can only be on one Samba network at a time (I might be wrong?). Default I believe any Windows box is configured to use WORKGROUP - but you can change this to whatever you like. Say your Raspberry has the name pi.local on WORKGROUP and the students are on a costum network STUDENTS, then the Raspberry would be out of reach for them because they are looking in the STUDENTS, not WORKGROUP. Hope that makes sense, and please correct me if I'm wrong, its been a while since I used Windows. But both OSX and Linux with Samba can see all networks. – Bolli – 2014-05-20T16:20:57.360
It might be reachable thru \WORKGROUP\pi.local though, I'm not sure about this – Bolli – 2014-05-20T16:24:56.063
@Bolli Thanks a lot for this, it's worth investigating. I had thought that NetBIOS was dead after realisation of how insecure it is. – deed02392 – 2014-05-20T18:24:00.133