Re: How do nonroot Android & nonjailbroken iOS run SMB servers to connect to each other & Windows?

On Tue, 22 Apr 2025 03:44:54 +0200, Arno Welzel wrote :

SimbaDroid (Open Source)
https://github.com/buttercookie42/SimbaDroid
SMB Version(s): SMBv1, SMBv2, SMBv3
Note: This app does not require root.

 
It does, if you want to use the default port - and getting Windows to
connect to port 4550 is not that simple:

Thanks for the clarifications as I never said I was a networking expert.
I'm not. That should be abundantly obvious to everyone by now, right?

Even so, I don't disagree with you. That listing was made long ago.

"Due to Android limitations, this app requires root (as on all Unixoid
operating systems, it is not possible to open a port < 1024 otherwise,
and the default SMB port is 445 and Windows doesn't work with anything
else). Without root, you either need some sort of SMB client which
allows configuring the port used (SimbaDroid uses port 4450 behind the
scenes), or some kind of port mapping software to allow Windows to
transparently connect to port 4450."

Understood. Thanks for unearthing that snippet which fits with what we know
about Android non root not being able to bind to (SMB) ports below 1024.

Many apps - and all have same issue: you can not open a port below 1024
for servers without root access. And not every SMB client is able to use
custom ports above 1024.

Thanks for being another voice where there are three "facts" at this point.
1. It turns out that iOS apps, nonjailbroken, can bind to privileged ports
2. Yet, we all always kind of sort of knew Android apps, nonrooted, cannot
3. Even so, SMB server apps exist on both iOS & Android platforms