On Thursday, October 18, 2018 at 9:26:27 PM UTC+5, Arlen Holder wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Oct 2018 01:06:20 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:
>
> >> Do you have experience port forwarding SMB ports on Windows?
> >
> > Yes, when I needed to map a drive over an SSH tunnel.
> >
> > netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4 listenport=xxx
> > listenaddress=192.168.xx.xx connectaddress=192.168.yy.yy connectport=yyy
> >
> > Because the lanmanserver service starts early and binds to 445 on all
> > interfaces, you may need to install a virtual kernel NIC driver in order
> > to get an interface with a "spare" IP address to listen on, it was
> > available from MS last time I needed it on Win7, not sure about Win10.
> Thanks for the confirmation of the best solution for port forwarding on
> Windows being the "netsh" command.
>
> I tried to test the netsh command, but I failed, where the failure was due
> to the lack of a suitable SMB server on Android that works with Windows
> without being root since Windows only uses TCP port 445 but non-rooted
> Android apps can't use any port lower than 1024:
> <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.mobile.android/CZolwHVb0-c>
>
> The command you suggested is similar to the one I concocted in the OP:
> netsh interface portproxy add Samba listenport=445 listenaddress=192.168.1.2 connectport=1234 connectaddress=192.168.0.3 protocol=tcp
> netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4 listenport=xxx listenaddress=192.168.xx.xx connectaddress=192.168.yy.yy connectport=yyy
> I wasn't able to test my concocted command because I can't yet find an SMB
> server that works on non-rooted Android.
>
> I had concocted that (untested) netsh command based on this reference:
> <https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/1705/using-smb-server-without-root-access>
> Which, itself, referenced the tutorial here:
> <https://techforpassion.blogspot.com/2013/12/android-how-to-share-folder-over-wifi.html>
> Which failed miserably due to the lack of that SMB server working on Nougat
> <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.icecoldapps.sambaserver>
>
> To be clear, "if" we can find an SMB server that works non root, then we
> could move to the stage of testing out the "netsh" command empirically.
>
> But that particularly SMB server clearly doesn't work on Nougat based on my
> tests, and based on a bunch of the reviews, which show exactly what I see:
> Andy Gaskell, May 31, 2017
> "I used this App on a Moto G4 and it worked really well. Then I tried it
> on a Moto G5 and when I click "Add" -> "SMB Server" the app just hangs
> with a blank black screen. I guess this might be an Android 7
> permissions problem. So, great on the Moto G4, but not working at all
> on the Moto G5."
>
> Marc Ritz, September 9, 2018
> "Doesn't work. Using Nougat. Just get a black screen when trying to
> add a server. Doesn't even ask for superuser rights up to that point."
>
> The problem is that this particular SMB server is the _only_ server that
> the authors of the tutorial found that worked at the time that tutorial was
> written (which was December 16, 2013), but that particular SMB server
> clearly does not work with Nougat, and, that server clearly hasn't been
> updated in a long time.
>
> For SMB to work, we need to find a solution that will allow us to
> a. On Android, run a non-root Samba/SMB server to listen on port 7777
> b. On Windows, run port-forwarding software to listen on port 445
> c On Windows, forward the SMB connections to port 7777
>
> So here's my plan, for SMB, to solve this age-old problem for everyone:
> 1. I'll keep seeking a non-root SMB server for Android, and,
> 2. Then, I'll run the netsh command on Windows to forward ports.
>
> The port forwarding for Windows is "on hold" until I can find an
> SMB server that works on Android non-root with ports above 1024.