Virtual PC 6 triggers smbclient on another Mac?

E

elander

Registered
Whenever I run Virtual PC 6 (with Windows XP Pro) on my PowerBook, smbclient on a nearby Mac mini starts acting up.

I have Little Snitch installed on both computers, and it's almost quiet on the PowerBook, but reports that smbclient wants to access a certain port on an address in the 192.168.x.x range.

The only reports on the PowerBook is that some applications want access to 0.0.0.0 (don't remember the port), and that happens twice when I start up Virtual PC.

On the mini, I get the smbclient message every thirty seconds as long as VPC is running on the PowerBook. As soon as I quit VPC on the PowerBook, the mini is silent again. Start up VPC on the PowerBook: smbclient on the mini goes active again.

I haven't tested the other way around, as I've lost the packaging and serial numbers for VPC and Windows and can't install VPC on the mini...

Oh: almost forgot, the computers are connected to the same network (Airport). But you probably guessed that already.

If anyone can shed a light on what the heck is going on, please post info or pointers to info here. I haven't found any clues on the 'net yet...
 
Without the port numbers I cannot be sure but most likely they are trying to do the little workgroup management dance that allows you to browse windows shares. On a given subnetwork the different boxes get together and elect a machine to be the local network manager, this is totally invisible to users. Basically they all get together and vote, that message to 0.0.0.0 is to the broadcast address and is effectively the machine shouting "Is anybody here! eh?"
 
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