samba: use of netbios name and aliases

In samba configuration file, /etc/samba/smb.conf, I generally add these options,

 netbios name = linux
netbios aliases = debian ubuntu

Then I can have different virtual samba servers, just like virtual web servers with apache. Isn’t it cool?

Using the apache analogy, the netbios name = option is set the default samba host, whilst the netbios aliases = option is to setup additional virtual hosts. samba can have different controls for these virtual hosts.

In a cooperate environment, the best strategy is to set a samba share service bind to the service name (e.g., file-server, public-library, etc), not to the machine name that actually serves the file-sharing, so that when the machine is replaced or gone away, the file-sharing services can be still remains the same.