wsdd implements a Web Service Discovery host daemon. This enables (Samba) hosts, like your local NAS device, to be found by Web Service Discovery Clients like Windows.

It also implements the client side of the discovery protocol which allows to search for Windows machines and other devices implementing WSD. This mode of operation is called discovery mode.

Since NetBIOS discovery is not supported by Windows anymore, wsdd makes hosts to appear in Windows again using the Web Service Discovery method. This is beneficial for devices running Samba, like NAS or file sharing servers on your local network. The discovery mode searches for other WSD servers in the local subnet.

With Windows 10 version 1511, support for SMBv1 and thus NetBIOS device discovery was disabled by default. Depending on the actual edition, later versions of Windows starting from version 1709 ("Fall Creators Update") do not allow the installation of the SMBv1 client anymore. This causes hosts running Samba not to be listed in the Explorer's "Network (Neighborhood)" views. While there is no connectivity problem and Samba will still run fine, users might want to have their Samba hosts to be listed by Windows automatically.

You may ask: What about Samba itself, shouldn't this functionality be included in Samba!? Yes, maybe. However, using Samba as file sharing service is still possible even if the host running Samba is not listed in the Network Neighborhood. You can still connect using the host name (given that name resolution works) or IP address. So you can have network drives and use shared folders as well. In addition, there is a patch lurking around in the Samba bug tracker since 2015. So it may happen that this feature gets integrated into Samba at some time in the future.

wsdd requires Python 3.7 and later only. It runs on Linux, FreeBSD and MacOS. Other Unixes, such as OpenBSD or NetBSD, might work as well but were not tested.

Although Samba is not strictly required by wsdd itself, it makes sense to run wsdd only on hosts with a running Samba daemon. Note that the OpenRC/Gentoo init script depends on the Samba service.

This section provides instructions how to install wsdd on different OS distributions. Sufficient privileges are assumed to be in effect, e.g. by being root or using sudo.

Install wsdd from the AUR package.

wsdd is included in RedHat/CentOS' EPEL repository. After setting that up, you can install wsdd like on Fedora where it is sufficient to issue

dnf install wsdd

There is currently no package for wsdd in the official Debian repositories. However, wsdd is considered to be part of the next Debian release, Bookworm, which in the testing phase. A wsdd package is also available in unstable.

To install wsdd under Bullseye and earlier see the "Others" section below.

Starting from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish), wsdd has landed in the official universe package repository. Thus, it is sufficient to install it via

apt install wsdd

This also applies to Linux Mint, starting from version 21 (Vanessa). For older Ubuntu LTS or Linux Mint releases, see the "Others" section below.

There are user-maintained packages for which you need to add the repository to the apt repo list and download the according GPG public key:

wget -O- https://pkg.ltec.ch/public/conf/ltec-ag.gpg.key | gpg --dearmour > /usr/share/keyrings/wsdd.gpg
source /etc/os-release
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/wsdd.gpg] https://pkg.ltec.ch/public/ ${UBUNTU_CODENAME:-${VERSION_CODENAME:-UNKNOWN}} main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wsdd.list

Note that the repository only provides packages for Debian and Ubuntu LTS releases up to Buster and Focal Fossa (20.04), respectively. The wsdd.list file created by the command above should be checked to refer to an appropriate distro code name.

After the GPG public key file and repository have been created, install wsdd via:

apt update
apt install wsdd

The wsdd port can be installed via

pkg install py39-wsdd

You can choose between two overlays: the GURU project and an author-maintained dedicated overlay which can be selected as follows

emerge eselect-repository
eselect repository enable guru
emerge --sync

After setting up one of them you can install wsdd with

emerge wsdd

No installation steps are required. Just place the wsdd.py file anywhere you want to, rename it to wsdd, and run it from there. The init scripts/unit files assume that wsdd is installed under /usr/bin/wsdd or /usr/local/bin/wsdd in case of FreeBSD. There are no configuration files. No special privileges are required to run wsdd, so it is advisable to run the service as an unprivileged, possibly dedicated, user for the service.

The etc directory of the repo contains sample configuration files for different init(1) systems, namely FreeBSD's rc.d, Gentoo's openrc, and systemd which is used in most contemporary Linux distros. Those files may be used as templates for their actual usage. They are likely to require adjustments to the actual distribution/installation where they are to be used.

Traffic for the following ports, directions and addresses must be allowed.

• incoming and outgoing traffic to udp/3702 with multicast destination:
  • 239.255.255.250 for IPv4
  • ff02::c for IPv6
• outgoing unicast traffic from udp/3702
• incoming to tcp/5357

You should further restrict the traffic to the (link-)local subnet, e.g. by using the fe80::/10 address space for IPv6. Please note that IGMP traffic must be enabled in order to get IPv4 multicast traffic working.

For UFW, an application profile can be found under etc/ufw/applications.d. Note that UFW profile only allow to grant the traffic on specific UDP and TCP ports, but a restriction on the IP range (like link local for IPv6) or the multicast traffic is not possible.

By default wsdd runs in host mode and binds to all interfaces with only warnings and error messages enabled. In this configuration the host running wsdd is discovered with its configured hostname and belong to a default workgroup. The discovery mode, which allows to search for other WSD-compatible devices must be enabled explicitly. Both modes can be used simultaneously. See below for details.

• -4, --ipv4only (see below)

• -6, --ipv6only

  Restrict to the given address family. If both options are specified no addreses will be available and wsdd will exit.

• -A, --no-autostart Do not start networking activities automatically when the program is started. The API interface (see man page) can be used to start and stop the networking activities while the application is running.

• -c DIRECTORY, --chroot DIRECTORY

  Chroot into a separate directory to prevent access to other directories of the system. This increases security in case of a vulnerability in wsdd. Consider setting the user and group under which wssd is running by using the -u option.

• -H HOPLIMIT, --hoplimit HOPLIMIT

  Set the hop limit for multicast packets. The default is 1 which should prevent packets from leaving the local network segment.

• -i INTERFACE/ADDRESS, --interface INTERFACE/ADDRESS

  Specify on which interfaces wsdd will be listening on. If no interfaces are specified, all interfaces are used. The loop-back interface is never used, even when it was explicitly specified. For interfaces with IPv6 addresses, only link-local addresses will be used for announcing the host on the network. This option can be provided multiple times in order to use more than one interface.

  This option also accepts IP addresses that the service should bind to. For IPv6, only link local addresses are actually considered as noted above.

• -l PATH/PORT, --listen PATH/PORT Enable the API server on the with a Unix domain socket on the given PATH or a local TCP socket bound to the given PORT. Refer to the man page for details on the API.

• -s, --shortlog

  Use a shorter logging format that only includes the level and message. This is useful in cases where the logging mechanism, like systemd on Linux, automatically prepend a date and process name plus ID to the log message.

• -u USER[:GROUP], --user USER[:GROUP]

  Change user (and group) when running before handling network packets. Together with -c this option can be used to increase security if the execution environment, like the init system, cannot ensure this in another way.

• -U UUID, --uuid UUID

  The WSD specification requires a device to have a unique address that is stable across reboots or changes in networks. In the context of the standard, it is assumed that this is something like a serial number. wsdd uses the UUID version 5 with the DNS namespace and the host name of the local machine as inputs. Thus, the host name should be stable and not be modified, e.g. by DHCP. However, if you want wsdd to use a specific UUID you can use this option.

• -v, --verbose

  Additively increase verbosity of the log output. A single occurrence of -v/--verbose sets the log level to INFO. More -v options set the log level to DEBUG.

• -V, --version

  Show the version number and exit.

In host mode, the device running wsdd can be discovered by Windows.

• -d DOMAIN, --domain DOMAIN

  Assume that the host running wsdd joined an ADS domain. This will make wsdd report the host being a domain member. It disables workgroup membership reporting. The (provided) hostname is automatically converted to lower case. Use the -p option to change this behavior.

• -n HOSTNAME, --hostname HOSTNAME

  Override the host name wsdd uses during discovery. By default the machine's host name is used (look at hostname(1)). Only the host name part of a possible FQDN will be used in the default case.

• -o, --no-server

  Disable host operation mode which is enabled by default. The host will not be discovered by WSD clients when this flag is provided.

• -p, --preserve-case

  Preserve the hostname as it is. Without this option, the hostname is converted as follows. For workgroup environments (see -w) the hostname is made upper case by default. Vice versa it is made lower case for usage in domains (see -d).

• -t, --nohttp

  Do not service http requests of the WSD protocol. This option is intended for debugging purposes where another process may handle the Get messages.

• -w WORKGROUP, --workgroup WORKGROUP

  By default wsdd reports the host is a member of a workgroup rather than a domain (use the -d/--domain option to override this). With -w/--workgroup the default workgroup name can be changed. The default work group name is WORKGROUP. The (provided) hostname is automatically converted to upper case. Use the -p option to change this behavior.

This mode allows to search for other WSD-compatible devices.

• -D, --discovery

  Enable discovery mode to search for other WSD hosts/servers. Found servers are printed to stdout with INFO priority. The server interface (see -l option) can be used for a programatic interface. Refer to the man page for details of the API.

• handle traffic on eth0 only, but only with IPv6 addresses

  wsdd -i eth0 -6

  or

  wsdd --interface eth0 --ipv6only

• set the Workgroup according to smb.conf and be verbose

  SMB_GROUP=$(grep -i '^\s*workgroup\s*=' smb.conf | cut -f2 -d= | tr -d '[:blank:]')

  wsdd -v -w $SMB_GROUP

(Read the source for more details)

For each specified (or all) network interfaces, except for loopback, an UDP multicast socket for message reception, two UDP sockets for replying using unicast as well as sending multicast traffic, and a listening TCP socket are created. This is done for both the IPv4 and the IPv6 address family if not configured otherwise by the command line arguments (see above). Upon startup a Hello message is sent. When wsdd terminates due to a SIGTERM signal or keyboard interrupt, a graceful shutdown is performed by sending a Bye message. I/O multiplexing is used to handle network traffic of the different sockets within a single process.

wsdd does not implement any security feature, e.g. by using TLS for the http service. This is because wsdd's intended usage is within private, i.e. home, LANs. The Hello message contains the hosts transport address, i.e. the IP address which speeds up discovery (avoids Resolve message).

In order to increase the security, use the capabilities of the init system or consider the -u and -c options.

If wsdd is running on FreeBSD using IPv6 only, the host running wsdd may not be reliably discovered. The reason appears to be that Windows is not always able to connect to the HTTP service for unknown reasons. As a workaround, run wsdd with IPv4 only.

Do not use wssd on interfaces that are affected by NAT. According to the standard, the ResolveMatch messages emitted by wsdd, contain the IP address ("transport address" in standard parlance) of the interface(s) the application has been bound to into. When such messages are retrieved by a client (Windows hosts, e.g.) they are unlikely to be able to connect to the provided address which has been subject to NAT. To avoid this issue, use the -i/--interface option to bind wsdd to interfaces not affected by NAT.

If tunnel/bridge interfaces like those created by OpenVPN or Docker exist, they may interfere with wsdd if executed without providing an interface that it should bind to (so it binds to all). In such cases, the wsdd hosts appears after wsdd has been started but it disappears when an update of the Network view in Windows Explorer is forced, either by refreshing the view or by a reboot of the Windows machine. To solve this issue, the interface that is connected to the network on which the host should be announced needs to be specified with the -i/--interface option. This prevents the usage of the tunnel/bridge interfaces.

Background: Tunnel/bridge interfaces may cause Resolve requests from Windows hosts to be delivered to wsdd multiple times,´i.e. duplicates of such request are created. If wsdd receives such a request first from a tunnel/bridge it uses the transport address (IP address) of that interface and sends the response via unicast. Further duplicates are not processed due to the duplicate message detection which is based on message UUIDs. The Windows host which receives the response appears to detect a mismatch between the transport address in the ResolveMatch message (which is the tunnel/bridge address) and the IP of the sending host/interface (LAN IP, e.g.). Subsequently, the wsdd host is ignored by Windows.

Contributions are welcome. Please ensure PEP8 compliance when submitting patches or pull requests. Opposite to PEP8, the maximum number of characters per line is increased to 120.

The code is licensed under the MIT license.

Thanks to Jose M. Prieto and his colleague Tobias Waldvogel who wrote the mentioned patch for Samba to provide WSD and LLMNR support. A look at their patch set made cross-checking the WSD messages easier.

• Web Services Dynamic Discovery

• SOAP-over-UDP (used during multicast)

• MSDN Documentation on Publication Services Data Structure

• MSDN on Windows WSD Compliance

• ...and the standards referenced within the above.

• Microsoft help entry on SMBv1 is not installed by default in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update and Windows Server, version 1709

• Samba WSD and LLMNR support (Samba Bug #11473)

• Discussion at tenforums.com about missing hosts in network Note: Solutions suggest to go back to SMBv1 protocol which is deprecated! Do not follow this advice.

• Discussion in Synology Community Forum

• Meanwhile, there is a C implementation of a WSD daemon, named wsdd2. This one also includes LLMNR which wsdd lacks. However, LLMNR may not be required depending on the actual network/name resolution setup.

• OpenWRT includes the above C implementation. So OpenWRT users are unlikely to need an installation of wsdd.

• FreeNAS appears to have wsdd included in the distribution.