SOLVED Strange issue with changing SMB NetBIOS name (can't access)

[oblivioncth]

Originally I setup the SCALE SMB service with the NetBIOS name of "TRUENAS" and everything other than the following in regards to SMB shares works fine.

I recently decided to change the NETBIOS name to something less generic and more relevant to this particular instance. After changing the name I could no longer access the system's shares in the usual way.

It's very strange. The server advertises itself under the new name FFYNNON, as that is what appears when going to "Network" on Windows clients; however, when you try to double click on that entry, the load eventually times out with "The network path was not found" (ironic, since it was through explorer). Yet what's wild, is that if you manually try to access the system via the old name in the address bar (i.e. \\TRUENAS\ ) it still works. The shares are accessible via IP as well of course.

If I change the name back to TRUENAS then the server goes back to advertising itself as such and is accessible by just clicking the machine name under Network again as before.

This issue persists even after restarting the SMB service and the entire system, as well as client systems.

It seems like something with the Samba config isn't being completely updated past the first time setup, or something of that nature, leading to the first name set becoming partially stuck.

Anyone else experience this?

Settings:

(Everything else below has been left blank)

EDIT:
I can confirm that

Code:

testparam -s

shows the new name has been applied to the config.

Also to clarify, it isn't some weird particular issue with the name I chose. No name other than the original I set (TRUENAS) works. Almost wondering if this is actually a different issue found through coincidence: That only the name TRUENAS specifically works, not whichever is initially set.

"truenas" is the machine name when you SSH in so that could very well be the case.

 

[oblivioncth]

Ok.

Did a little more digging. It seems that the NetBIOS name option is only relevant for legacy SMB (SMB1) connections and if you have NetBIOS-NS enabled.

For modern SMB, what actually matters is the name of the machine, which SCALE inherits from the "Hostname" field under Network->Global Configuration. So it's not just the hostname for the machine in the context of DNS, SSL certs, and the like, but it also used as the proper machine name that will be shown when connecting via SSH and connecting to the systems SMB server. In Linux the term "hostname" refers to the system name. As someone with much more of a Windows background I was not aware of this, since usually "system name" or "computer name" is more traditional there. It does make sense since "host name" refers to a literal host, but it just never clicked outside of the context of HTTP for me until now.

Probably doesn't help that I just spent a ton of time setting up a reverse proxy and split-horizon DNS, so all of that was freshly in my mind when thinking of hostnames.

What's strange is how even though I'm connecting from Windows 10 (so not SMB1) and don't have NetBIOS-NS enabled, changing the NetBIOS name entry did "partially" change the SMB share server name as described in my issue...

While technically this is standard Unix/Samba, I do wish that the TrueNAS UI tooltip for NetBIOS name under the SMB section let you know that you need to change the hostname if you're using modern Samba, or if the hostname tool tip let you know that it affects the machine name (and therefore SMB shares) as well.